Why use backticks?

[Asun Friere]

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1052252772.6620.python-list at python.org>...
>     Iwan> Is there any use for them except making code harder to read ? :-)
> 
> They make Perl folks more comfortable when first introduced to Python.
> 
> Skip
Why would they make Perl folks any more comfortable?  It's not like
"files = `ls -1`" is going to give them much joy.