Not when you get used to it.

That's what they said about Lisp and Perl.

I can't tell whether you're just being tongue-in-cheek, or perfectly serious. I hope the former.

Little of both, really. I actually think Lisp is beautiful, although it can be difficult to read. As for Perl...

http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol3_2/tpj0302-0012.html

No excuse.

I don't think you're supposed to be able to get used to obfuscated anything. By that metric, C is equally unreadable: http://ioccc.org/

I've seen very readable perl code, although I won't use that to make sweeping generalizations about the entire language.

To be fair, I never said C was pretty. I have no real problem with Perl aside from its overabundance of punctuation.

It is for those that haven't fully internalized the symmetry of ==. Is it a lack of effort, or a lack of ability?

That's a pretty condescending thing to say. To answer your rhetorical question, we are taught from elementary school to say, "x = 3", not "3 = x". Yes, it's the same, but it's jarring.

I remember getting marked off once in either my algebra 1 or geometry class for leaving some answers in the form "3 = x". (What, you gave me an equation of "5 = 3x - 4"! It's harder to follow the work you make me do if I suddenly swap everything.) Anyway, I never found it jarring, though I can see why others might. (And if you've never had exposure to TI basic.. 3->x.)

TI BASIC kinda reminds me of assembly in that way.