In agreement with @avmich above, and to turn the question around from above:
&gt; Do you think the APL family can exist without the terse syntax? Are there any aspects of the language that just wouldn&#x27;t work well without it?<p>Do you think mathematics would exist or be shared and done as efficiently if it did away with the terseness of its symbols, Greek letters, etc...?<p>Yes, in J you can define average as:<p><pre><code>  +&#x2F;%#
</code></pre>
so that,<p><pre><code>  (+&#x2F;%#) 2 3 4 5</code></pre>
returns 3.5<p>Or,<p><pre><code>  avg=: +&#x2F;%#
</code></pre>
avg 2 3 4 5
returns 3.5<p>Or,<p><pre><code>  sum =: +&#x2F;
  divided_by =: %
  tally =: #
</code></pre>
So, if you want to take baby steps into J you can:<p>avg=: sum divided_by tally<p>avg 2 3 4 5
returns 3.5<p>But, that defeats the purpose of being able to concisely manipulate abstractions to get work done for the sake of readability, and ONLY for those people who refuse to learn the symbols as in mathematics. Have you ever heard from an adult who has had basic mathematics say, &#x27;I have to keep looking up that greek letter π&#x27;? It only takes me a very little while to review my concise code. I&#x27;d rather learn this sort of pattern recognition of short code when dealing with high abstractions to the spaghetti-like appearance, to me, of Java or C (I like C!). Strangely enough I find Lisp more clear to C-like langs. It may be more than just subjective preference, but order of reasoning in the syntax.