[lokedhs]

The short answer is yes. There have been many presentations on this topic that tries to explain it in various ways.

The problem is that most people who are unfamiliar with APL usually don't see the larger picture, and you need to learn the language before understanding the reasoning. But once you understand it, you don't really need to hear the arguments anymore.

One argument that may be easier to digest is that the very optimised syntax allows you to easily work with the data in an interactive fashion. This is similar to how a calculator that forced you to write 1.add(2) would be rather painful to use, even if it functionally is the same as 1+2.

In programs that you save to a file and is part of a larger project, this benefit is of course less relevant.