It's a common operation. You should see how many people have to code it/get it wrong in topcoder. So it overloads * -- how often are you going to multiply a string?
We have different opinions on what's important in a language. I want something that's as fast to write as prose, so that my mind can focus on other things in the problem domain. This may mean that my code is rather unreadable to people used to coding in specific idioms. But functionality is commented at a higher level, so then what are they doing reading individual statements from my code anyway?
This means that, sometimes, I find myself in opposition to the python community for its goals of readability and regularity, but it's a powerful language chalk full of good ideas and one of the most important tribes on the net, so I still use it.
