I don't think this comment should get downvoted this much - it may sound a bit provocative, but the question is an interesting one, and worth getting answered.

I don't think this comment should get downvoted this much - it may sound a bit provocative, but the question is an interesting one, and worth getting answered. > what is this obsession with terse languages It's not an obsession at all. It's a recognition of the fact that there are certain areas where the terseness is helpful, sometimes exceptionally so. It doesn't fit everywhere, and indeed there are domains where it would be downright detrimental. Still, people who prefer compact languages know this and are sure to carefully evaluate the circumstances before choosing APL or Forth. There are "rabid fans" - who would like to rewrite the whole world itself in their beloved language - in every language community, but in my experience, they're scarce among APL, J, or Forth users. > that look like a composition of random characters, Most of the tersest programming languages are meant for interactive, REPL-driven development. In PLs like APL, Forth, J, K, Cat, and now Xs, you are supposed to build your programs as a series of short expressions that you create and evaluate interactively in the interpreter. In such a setting, where you're likely to rewrite and evaluate every expression often, it's faster and more convenient to work with as concise syntax as possible. It's simply a different development mode, and it has its strengths, and - like every other programming model - its weaknesses. > didn't we learn from Perl First, Perl is nowhere near the terseness of APL or J, so I'm not sure what it is you think we should have learned from it. Further, Perl sigils are actually an elegant solution to the problem of type conversions in a dynamically typed language. Take a look at JavaScript and PHP, with all their implicit type-related shenanigans, then come back to Perl - chances are you'll appreciate the sigils quite a lot. The most important thing with APL descendants is that they all have a minimal amount of core operations, which compose incredibly well. Xs is at a very early stage of development, and it will undoubtedly grow, but for now, it has but 5 functions bound to single-character symbols. You can check out the J vocabulary to see a mature, well-developed array language: https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/NuVoc https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/NuVoc It might look overwhelming at first, but it's essential to realize that what you see on that page is the entirety of J - there's nothing more to the whole language. It's not English-based, but math notation also isn't, and it's similarly concise. Plus, for a significant portion of the planet's inhabitants, English-based languages are just as foreign as J is to you. To sum it all up: the conciseness of the APL-related languages, which comes from both heavy use of symbols for function names and the tiny amount of core concepts which compose effortlessly, opens the door to a style of programming which fits certain domains and circumstances very well. It may be hard to grasp without first putting some effort and playing with them for a bit... Still, the array and concatenative languages are powerful, and in the right circumstances, can provide an indispensable boost to programmers' productivity.