The paper needs to explain what is being done, why and under what assumptions. As long as each of those are clearly explained, in my experience, it doesn't real

The paper needs to explain what is being done, why and under what assumptions. As long as each of those are clearly explained, in my experience, it doesn't really matter whether each of them is explained in words/math/code. Yes, one form might be a little bit more work for people from a certain background, but that's a hump you can get over relatively easily after reading a few papers on the topic. The worst is when you have to guess at what the authors might be doing and why they're doing it that way, and what assumptions they might be operating under... and all they've done is dumped their results within the page limit and before the conference submission deadline.