[ronbrz]

Having been interested in APL, but never taking the plunge and learning it, I've seen this article "Notation as a tool of thought" (this is linked in the submitted article as well) thrown around: https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm

The paper kicks off with a quote by George Boole: "That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted." Having a terse language in itself can lend itself to thinking about problems and playing around with them in your head more effectively. I know when I'm thinking about an algorithm to be implemented in something like java there isn't room for all the boilerplate in my head. Stuff like "public static void main..." gets fuzzed out when thinking about a solution, to be replaced the idea of "place where main method is".

I like the idea of boiling down useful abstractions to the most simple symbols we can manipulate mentally, to be able to fit the most possible high level abstractions in our mind at the same time. This should make it possible to be able to play more with constructing solutions. Never feeling particularly locked down because you have to manipulate a lot of syntax and curly braces to implement or think about an idea. That you only have to switch around a few symbols for a change in semantic meaning.

Having never learned something like APL myself, I can't speak personally about the effectiveness of this idea.