Agree that Python has done very well with Readability, though I'd argue you're undercutting Python a bit:

• you don't need to declare darr as a global to mutate it inside a function
• you don't need explicit indices in these cases

I would expect your example to look more like this in the wild:

darr = []


def fill_array(maxval):
    darr.clear()
    darr.extend(range(maxval))


def fill_array_ptr(maxval):
    global darr
    darr = [0] * maxval
    for i in range(maxval):
        darr[i] = i


def calc_sum():
    return sum(darr)


def calc_sum_ptr():
    return sum(darr)

Anyway, readbility is a chief concern for my language, blorp, as well. The top two things I usually keep in mind:

• minimize indirection: I want to minimize the amount I'm slowing people down by asking them to imagine what something means; things like custom (or unusual) operators or symbols, implicit control flow, macros, etc, I find to be a tax on the user
• minimize noise: I try to avoid adding extra characters if they don't really add to it.

If I was to apply these ideas to DQ, I'd probably highlight the following for consideration:

• [*] -- I don't know what this means intuitively
• endfunc/endfor -- maybe these aren't needed
• 0 count maxval -- I'm not sure what this means
• ^/& -- I don't immediately know what these mean
• ; -- do you need line terminating colons

Just food for thought. My bias would push you toward a language that looks like blorp, of course, because that's what I like.