[jacobolus]

> mathematicians did it for thousands of years (just read Newton’s Principia)

What mathematicians did for thousands of years arose in a culture of oral proofs supplemented by prepared diagrams: Euclid's proofs were meant to be recited aloud in front of an audience while pointing at an image labeled only with single letters/numerals – not read in a book. The society was substantially illiterate, there was no access to paper or good pens, algebra had not yet been invented, and all arithmetic was done mentally or using fingers or physical tokens.

Compared to mathematical notation, natural language expressions are often incredibly large and cumbersome, can make following the argument extremely difficult, and make many kinds of symbolic manipulations all but impossible.

Providing a visual way to interpret and manipulate mathematical expressions was a revolution in mathematics without which most modern mathematics would never have appeared. Eliminating that is comparable to writing computer programs via punched cards because "that's how they used to do it".