As for hash literals - I didn't like the addition of the new syntax simply because it's limited to one type of keys. We had a perfectly good universal syntax and introduced a second one just to save up on typing in one common usecase. Not to mention that in the 1.9 syntax you don't use keywords directly but labels, which are different syntactic construct (:keyword vs label:). I think I understand your perspective, but it seems you value typing less and subjective aesthetics and I value mostly simplicity (minimalistic syntax and uniformity being some of its key aspects).
Sorry, reread your comment a couple times, and I still don't understand what you mean by the 1.9 syntax being a label. The keys in `{ key: 'value' }` and `{ :key => 'value' }` are both Symbols.
As for hash literals - I didn't like the addition of the new syntax simply because it's limited to one type of keys. We had a perfectly good universal syntax and introduced a second one just to save up on typing in one common usecase. Not to mention that in the 1.9 syntax you don't use keywords directly but labels, which are different syntactic construct (:keyword vs label:). I think I understand your perspective, but it seems you value typing less and subjective aesthetics and I value mostly simplicity (minimalistic syntax and uniformity being some of its key aspects).