I experimented with Python in college and I've been for close to 20 years now. (Coming and going as needed) I love the language. But there is one annoyance that I continually run into. There are basically two assignment operators, based on context, = and : a = 1 { a: 1 } They cannot be used interchangeably: a: 1 # error {a=1} # error I don't think I should be this way. There are times when I have a bunch of variables that I want to collect into an object or destructure. This involves adding commas, and swapping the :/=. I don't have a good fix for the adding of commas (maybe a newline?) but I think : should at least be accepted as = everywhere except in ifs: a: 1 # same as a = 1 One area where it might help (although the python parser already catches it) is in ifs: if a:1 # always error ? if a=1 # currently error, but might be accepted shorthand for == ? Ideally, I could take a: 1 b: 2 then in 3 edits: 1. first line prepend 'x: {' 2. last line append '}' 3. indent between { } I guess his would imply that { open up an assignment scope, where newlines are commas if the last line did not end with an operator or the next line did not start with an operator: x: { a: x - # - operator f(x) b: # : operator 5487234728394720348988734574357 c: 7 # c is 13, no trailing operator but next line has a preceding operator + 6 } The only issue then is how do we address a? x.a # looks fine to me x['a'] # as a dict, but the conversion of a to string 'a' could be confusing. Additionally, I was also thinking about : as an implied await: a = await f() # await generator a: f() # await generator, or direct assignment if return type is not a generator/async func Thoughts? Please be gentle :-)