> I never liked Python much, until I got forced to use it on a new team. Now I'm convinced that it has a really distinct advantage -- there aren't too many ways to write Python, so an experienced Python developer can figure out code pretty quickly.

This is why I picked up Python many years ago. I had been using Perl 5 for my scripting and system administration needs. While it worked just fine any project larger than a few hundred lines needed a lot of discipline to keep maintainable. Perl encouraged too many line noise shortcuts, reading unfamiliar code was too often an exercise in looking up uncommon operators.

It's elegant when writing but frustrating when reading. Python not only read a bit more like it executed but didn't lend itself to unreadable shortcuts. If your code is elegant to write it tends to be straightforward to read.

When Perl 6 was still Perl 6 the DSL stuff sounded interesting until like you I realized it would just turn large projects into unreadable messes. It wouldn't help the small Perl scripts be more readable nor would it help the large projects be more maintainable.