Well, 12 years is an exaggeration. Once you have learned the concepts (which you need to learn independently of which programming language you use), getting use

Well, 12 years is an exaggeration. Once you have learned the concepts (which you need to learn independently of which programming language you use), getting used to the symbols is just a matter of a bit of practice. For example, I learnt to multiply with 3x2, but it did not take me 12 years to get used to the 3*2 notation used by most programming languages. The symbols you have to remember are the ASCII symbols (most of them are used in other programming languages too), with two operations for symbol, plus a few special cases and a bunch of extra functions. In total, less than 50 primitives. I think that any programmer can easily handle that. There are many people who do not agree with this, but there is objective data (see the papers by Iverson about his efforts to teach mathematics using APL) that say it is easy to learn. In all these threads, most people with experience in array languages say it is not so hard as it looks, although there are some exceptions. You may prefer other kind of languages or other kind of notation. There certainly is some subjective factor here. But I suggest everyone to give it a try before forming an opinion.