I was quite feeling pretty positive about the 'stab' (thanks Steve for this term!) operator idea, until I tried out some examples locally, and it just feels a bit too out-of-place in python, for me (100% subjective opinion here).
Having used stabs and compact closure syntax in various languages: swift, c++, javascript, I'd assumed that the joy of just writing `c=>c.foo()` would translate well to python (sometimes lambda x: x.foo() just seems too cumbersome to write out, even if this is a lazy feeling, it's real).
But, despite trying a few variants: ->, =>, different whitespace, etc.. , they all still felt non-ideal.
I think the main difference, for me, is that the other languages that have adoped this syntax all rely much more on symbols (non-textual tokens) for control flow and structure. (braces, ternary operators, block syntax, etc..) so adding in another non-textual token that also has structural meaning feels natural. You're already 'reading' the symbols to understand what the language is doing, so there are no big surprises when stabs come along.
With python there are very few (any?) purely symbolic control flow tokens, and so I naturally expect words to be present to indicate what's going on. Suddenly there's a symbol that indicates a new control structure, and it risks getting lost in the noise.
On balance, I'd probably end up using stabs if they were added to Python, but having tried out a few examples on existing code, no longer think it's worth adding them.
Thanks
Steve