[icsa]

> the sample code I've seen mostly reads as noise to me

Would you rather write/read:

DIVIDE X BY 5 GIVING Y

or

y=x/5; / this would be considered "noisy" per your definition, relative to COBOL

The first is COBOL (designed to make code easier for "normal" people to read. The second is C/Java/Python/Javascript (which looks more like the math that we learn in grade school).

k/APL/J simple moves further in the direction of the algebraic notation you already know. The difference is more operations/algorithms.

When you read the one-character symbols in K as algorithms versus characters, it makes much more sense. In addition, you can read "faster" in k than in other languages, relative to the functionality being expressed.

When I review C/Java/C++, I print out the source code and write the equivalent k code in the margin. The compression ration is typically 10-20X. Doing so speeds up my work significantly when I go back over the reviewed code.