> some gratuitous changes to the core shell syntax that were not improvements
> For example, replacing "&&" and "||" with "and" and "or", is not an improvement. There are many other such changes that make the shell more verbose without bringing any advantage.
In Fish, `and` was never a synonym for `&&`, and `or` was never a synonym for `||`. Fish's use of `and` and `or` also did not introduce any syntax that you won't find in Bash and friends. `and` and `or` in Fish are _commands_, and they use the _pre-existing syntax_ for _normal commands_.
This is absolutely an improvement, because it's strictly less syntax that allows you to do all of the same things with virtually no increase in the number of characters. `; or` is only a single character more than ` ||`, and `;or` is the same number of characters as ` ||`. This is a very bad example of ‘increased verbosity’.