[ajanuary]

My understanding of the idea behind most APL style languages is that it's an expert language, in that you need to take the time to invest in it just like a musician would musical notation.

Once you've done that, the theory is that it is actually quicker and easier to grasp than reading "verbose" lines of code.

That said, I've never taken the time to invest in an APL style language, so I can't speak to whether it is actually true or not.

[d0m]

Makes sense. If you spend enough time it can become second nature, like musical sheets. Still, I find that musical notations is way more limited, so it makes sense to have it concise. But let say people were naming some parts of the songs, and referring to it, and you had to jump and "get into the mind" of the person who wrote it.. than maybe it'd be a different story and more verbosity would be better.

[evincarofautumn]

APL/J/K code is really like mathematics, something that most programmers aren’t exposed to in the slightest. If you don’t grok it immediately, then you can actually just sit down and equationally work out the author’s exact thinking, in precise terms—and you level up as a side effect, so you don’t need to work out the same patterns every time you see them. That’s nigh impossible in C++!

Take it from someone who has seen both sides: the concision is a good, good thing.