That's quite surprising to me. As someone who writes a lot of Javascript, I usually find it easiest to read with this syntax than without it, and I generally recommend to my team that they use the shorthand where they can. This is because the meaning is clear and well-known, and being concise (while still being clear) is very valuable.

I wonder what specifically the original author found made it more difficult to read. Was it unfamiliarity? They allude to some confusion between sigils and strings, so I wonder if the issue was partly an Elixir-specific one.