No idea if this was already proposed, but the problem with explicit else could be solved with a dedicated ‘conditional assignment’ syntax, for example
x = 4 if a > 10
that would resolve to
x =
if a > 10 do
4
else
x
end
It’s still an expression and doesn’t look imperative. Then we’d “only” have the for problem left 
P.S. and it’s quite Pythonic 
