[dragonwriter]

Note that only about 1/3 of this critique (the last example, and with slightly different actual syntax in place of the preferred syntax) of "conventional programming languages" applies to the #1 language on the Tiobe index, which does, in fact, use and instead of && and or instead of || but uses ":" instead of "then" in if statements.

[cubefox]

Yeah that was more a criticism of the common C syntax. The use of the colon in Python is pretty good as it mirrors the usage in ordinary text. Though it still follows the pattern "if (A): B else: C" with parentheses around A. That seems superfluous.

(Unfortunately Python also follows the herd in using "=" for assignment and "==" for equality. It should arguably be "<-" or ":=" for assignment and "=" for equality. But that's a matter of asking for better symbols rather than of asking for better English operator names.)

[dragonwriter]

> The use of the colon in Python is pretty good as it mirrors the usage in ordinary text. Though it still follows the pattern "if (A): B else: C" with parentheses around A.

Python doesn't require parens for the condition in an if-statement, and the default settings of black or Ruff formatters will remove them if present where not needed. (They can be needed if, e.g., you are breaking a condition across multiple physical lines.)

> Unfortunately Python also follows the herd in using "=" for assignment and "==" for equality. It should arguably be "<-" or ":=" for assignment and "=" for equality.

Note that Python uses ":=" for the assignment expression operator as well as "=" for the simple assignment statement operator.