Oh come on, it doesn't.
They are most of the time a fantastic indicator of the cognitive load a feature will add in prod. Because of course a feature doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's always in a more complex context. So what's easy to understand for a student will be alright for a pro in the complexity of real life engineering. And I found the opposite to hold quite often as well.
I haven't tried the walrus on them yet, but I'm pretty sure of the result.
There are already so many complicated semantics about mutability, iteration, bytes/strings, scoping, et al. And yet somehow a tiny piece of syntax that finally lets us stop writing "while true/break" is the big pain point?
That is fine if you want to optimize language for "fresh students". That is not representative how brain process stuff after getting even some experience.
m = re.match(...)
if m:
... do something ...
if m := re.match(...):
... do something ...
if m := re.match(...); m {
... do something ...
}
with open('file') as f:
... do something ...
if re.match(...) as m:
... do something ...