Crystal hash syntax ruins Crystal

Crystal hash syntax destroyed the language, for me.

Why would you, when creating a new language and faced with the opportunity to fix what your forebears got wrong, repeat one of their mistakes?

Ruby/Crystal hash syntax is awful, in my opinion. Both languages already implement a better syntax for hashes of symbol-string pairs - why not make this the default for the language (as with Python's dicts)? I can't see any syntax conflict in the rest of the language.