You know, there's a reason why there's so many "one-man hobby project" implementations of, say, APL. It's actually not that hard! If you're willing to spend a week (yes, a week), you can have your own barebones implementation of APL. And from there, it's really sort of your playground, which is neat. Thought of a cool idea? Implement it!
Obviously, most people won't want to do this, investing time (even if it's not that much) in something they don't really even have any experience invested in. But it's an easier option than you might expect.
Indeed it does!
Not to try to be confrontational, but have you written any substantial programs in an array language like APL? I'm sure that any APL programmer will be the first to tell you that writing APL would be unbearable if those "unreadable" symbols were replaced with names! Why? Because in APL, each symbol is a unit of meaning, and there's simply no reason for each unit of meaning to be more than a single character. Why should I type `add folded divided_by count` when I can just write `+/÷≢`?
> Sure, you can learn to read and write what superficially looks like line noise, but the market has spoken: very few people want to.
True! And it will surely always be true! But no one would want to write APL without the symbols. ("But isn't Tensorflow just like APL without the symbols?" No. Tensorflow is based on the array paradigm, but it is very, very different from an array __language__ like APL.)
> obscure syntax over English
This is effectively like berating the Chinese for inventing a writing system that looks nothing like the Latin script. Is it totally different? Yes. Does that make it inherently bad? No. (Can it still be bad? Yes! But I don't think APL and friends are as bad as people might think.)
Anyway, that's my two cents on the obscure syntax of array languages are a tool, not a problem. They'll always limit the userbase, there's no doubt about that, but I couldn't imagine a world without them.
You know, there's a reason why there's so many "one-man hobby project" implementations of, say, APL. It's actually not that hard! If you're willing to spend a week (yes, a week), you can have your own barebones implementation of APL. And from there, it's really sort of your playground, which is neat. Thought of a cool idea? Implement it! Obviously, most people won't want to do this, investing time (even if it's not that much) in something they don't really even have any experience invested in. But it's an easier option than you might expect.