I think I'd rather have a half page of APL with a page of explanations (given a little time to learn the language better than I do now) than 20 pages of Java that I have to scroll through with comments and unintelligible class paths.

Either way it takes time to consume the logic, but it's nice to have it all in one place than scattered about all over creation. I think that's what he's getting at with Aaron's more macro based view. He wrote thousands and thousands of loc before being able to whittle it down to such a terse amount. I can't read it, but that's less to do with APL and a lot more to do with knowing nothing of the domain of compilers.

The symbols actually make a lot of sense and can help you remember what they do. I can remember quite a few after only playing around with it a bit and reading a book on it ages ago.