I don't think that it's really subpar. It's just unusual compared to others. In and of itself it's very consistent. For instance there's `|capture|` for capturing all sort of things(errors, optionals, ...) in nearly all control flow constructs. `blk:` for naming blocks, `if`s, `switch`, and so on.
Have a look at this blog post:
https://matklad.github.io/2025/08/09/zigs-lovely-syntax.html