This seems similar to this previous discussion
except in the opposite direction (the inclusion of keywords vs their removal).
I think anyone coming to any language (human or software) has to be willing to learn it to become convsersant in it to other people using it. There are many ways to express ideas in a language. Some give you more options than others to say essentially the same thing. Sometimes this is good, but it may be abused when clarity isn’t the real goal.
“There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.” - Thomas Reid
Here I feel, as someone who came from Ruby, the syntax feels familiar and consistent with past experience. What I had to learn unique to Crystal was mostly based on idioms necessary to program in a compiled language paradigm. But that wasn’t a big deal because I knew a little C, C++, etc, so these concepts weren’t new to learn.
Here the developers of Crystal made certain decisions, based on their preferences, which you wish to extend to meet your preferences. I guess the things they have to determine are 1) does it make the language easier to write, 2) does it make it easier to read, 3) does it make it perform better.
I don’t see this proposal affecting 3).
So it seems it’s just a matter of satisfying 1) and 2) to them.
I don’t think the devs are going to (need to) go through the effort to change the language to accommodate these changes, with the finite amount of time, energy, and resources needed to do other things.
Sometimes you just have to say to yourself, is the language useful (and nice to use) the way it is, warts and all, or do I wait for it to meet my concept of perfection (or even just much better) until I use it?
I would just say, don’t let perfection be an opponent of utility.