[floatrock]

How did the people who read that paper get to the point that they are able to quickly decipher what the authors had written? Brute force repetition.

Back in high school I played a musical instrument. I practiced my scales, was quizzed on them, then practiced them some more for years. I got pretty high-school-good at this instrument, enough to earn a small scholarship. I never continued it into engineering school though, and one of the milestones I never reached was the ability to improvise within a key. You see, despite practicing the fingerings of the different keys hundreds of times, it wasn't enough to gain the intuition needed to just feel it out on my own.

Those people who read that paper and could decipher what the authors had written HAD practiced their scales enough times to develop that intuition.

Bret isn't trying to provide the most compact representation out there. He's trying to present the best model that helps you build that intuition the fastest. In music, you had to spend hours repeating the same scales so your fingers would get hard-wired into the valid combinations for a specific keys... the question is how can we build tools and techniques that help us reach that level of effortless mastery faster.