Man, I feel like you hit the nail on the head here... this is definitely the best way I could think to articulate why `unless` throws me off so much.

Weirdly, Ruby was one of the first languages I learned early in my career, and at the time I had no problem with `unless`. But after years of experience with other languages, I similarly feel that `if` statements now trigger the fast pattern matching circuits in my brain, while `unless` makes me do a double-take and basically translate it into `if not`

At first I thought I was just becoming dumber with age, but I like your explanation better :P