[chongli]

Mathematics would be much more approachable if it just used plain English like `sum(0, Infinity, my_func)` instead of a big Greek sigma with nested function nomenclature

First of all, no, mathematics would be far less approachable if it did that. Most of the Greek letters used in mathematics don't have a universal meaning, they're context-specific and defined by convention or just prior to use.

Second of all, mathematics is optimized for hand calculation on paper, not long-term programming and code maintenance. Writing out long names over and over on a whiteboard gets tiring extremely quickly, so mathematicians prefer to stick to single-letter symbols.

[annzabelle]

To second this, most (non-applied) mathematicians work first with paper and pencil or on a chalkboard, and the act of writing out the symbols is a part of thinking about them. Typing doesn't wire into the brain in the same way. Think of how you learned algebra in school. You wrote out much of what you were thinking, often in ways that would be hard to flexibly format on a computer, and the act of writing your thoughts solidified them in your memory.

Mathematicians pretty much universally view typesetting as a distinct step from the thinking part of math, and something you do at the end once you have figured everything out.