Agreed. The small(ish) vocabulary of operators makes K easier for me to use. Would you rather write/read: DIVIDE X BY 5 GIVING Y or y=x/5; The first is COB

Agreed. The small(ish) vocabulary of operators makes K easier for me to use. Would you rather write/read: DIVIDE X BY 5 GIVING Y or y=x/5; The first is COBOL (designed to make code easier for "normal" people to read. The second is C (which looks more like the math that we learn in grade school). k/APL/J simple moves further in the direction of math. As a far as descriptive names go, in k, names can always be aliased with longer names (assuming no conflicts). I do this when exposing a library k code as a web interface.