Music notation is pretty much the archetypal example of something designed by power users for power users. As someone who has done some orchestra conducting an

Music notation is pretty much the archetypal example of something designed by power users for power users. As someone who has done some orchestra conducting and composing, it's incredibly powerful and expressive, and the fact that you can usefully conduct an orchestra on an unknown piece with nothing but a score (no recordings) is amazing. Music notation hits a very powerful level of abstraction, and is so information-dense that all the information required to recreate a symphony fits in a small book. When I was a child trying to learn music reading for piano, it was incredibly arcane and difficult, but it was learnable with a lot of practice. The equivalent of "phonics" lasts well into college for composers and conductors, though, who have a lot more to learn to build a mental model of a score. I should also add that young pianists and organists have the hardest job here - most instruments otherwise require you to read at most 4 notes at a time from one "staff" (a staff is like a line of text). Even professionals on other instruments can have trouble reading piano music, which can involve 10 or more simultaneous notes spread across 2 staves (or 3 for organ music).