[lolinder]

Agreed on both counts. We give C++ a lot of flack for verbose syntax, but separating scope resolution (::) from member access (.) is something that it got right, not a place to cut.

They're semantically similar, but not the same, which is actually exactly the place where you should distinguish syntax. Using parentheses for both expression grouping and function calls doesn't hurt readability much, but using them for both function calls and array access would. This falls more in the latter category.