I've been working with Haskell* for a couple of years and it is quite often that I work with code that I don't fully understand. I'll come across a terse bit of code, then carefully take it apart to see what it does (by taking bits and pieces out and giving them names instead of passing in using point-free notation and also adding type annotations). Once I see the whole picture, I make my own change and then carefully re-assemble the original terse bit of code. One could ask the question: wasn't the verbose version better? I'm going to lean on the side of no. If I left this verbose and other bits verbose then it would be hard to see the whole picture.
I think doing maths would be better if it was done interactively with software. If equations were code then you could blow it up and look into fine details and then shrink it to a terse form while software keeps track of the transformations to make sure what you write is equivalent. Maybe it's time to add a laptop to that paper pad?
* not arguing anything language specific here except that Haskell makes use of variety of notations that makes the code shorter and more like mahts. More so than most languages.
I think doing maths would be better if it was done interactively with software. If equations were code then you could blow it up and look into fine details and then shrink it to a terse form while software keeps track of the transformations to make sure what you write is equivalent. Maybe it's time to add a laptop to that paper pad?
* not arguing anything language specific here except that Haskell makes use of variety of notations that makes the code shorter and more like mahts. More so than most languages.