Comment by lapinot
5 years ago
Looking at java, rust or assembly i find this argument hard to swallow ;) It's really worth it to learn some sequent calculus basics to be able to read typing rules. Its mostly the same thing as a grammar, or a weird inductive type ("enum").
It shouldn't be hard to swallow. Monospaced ascii text that is (usually) unambiguous with extensive documentation is night and day from formal notation.
At least BNF grammars are legible
Look at APL, K, and J. The notation based on keywords is not a problem; the problematic notations are the ones which abuse strange characters or ideograms, because they require you to re-learn the process of reading.