I think it's pattern matching and intuition. If I see y = k/x, I can immediately process what that looks like. Further, I can take advantage of tons of conventi

I think it's pattern matching and intuition. If I see y = k/x, I can immediately process what that looks like. Further, I can take advantage of tons of conventions that make it read differently from a = b/c or even y = z/x. The conventions take some getting used to, but after a while writing out dependentVariable = divideBy(constant, independentVariable) would get super tedious and it's absolutely not instantly pattern matchable. Especially when you're working out some manipulation where you have to write the same variable a zillion times, and maybe even depending on your brain's pattern matching and inspiration to kick in. Hell, at this point I even use a shorthand for cos and sin for those reasons.