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Comment by RodgerTheGreat | Hacker News Reader

if you insist on verbose names, they're always an option in K:

    west_scan           : |\   A
    east_scan           : ||\| A
    water_level         : west_scan & east_scan
    height_water_column : water_level - A
    max_height          : |/ height_water_column
    total_water         : +/ height_water_column

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Adding to RodgerTheGreat's comment: for me, k's power is its rich set of adverbs that are convenient to write.

Notice that aside from reverse (monadic |), all verb symbols in the above code are in most other languages (max as |, min as &, plus as +, minus as -). Adverbs (such as / for reduce and \ for scan-reduce) make the symbols we already have more generally applicable.

I think a language could go a long way with a small set of basic arithmetic symbols alongside a rich set of adverb symbols.

And perhaps further worth noting, the reason K uses dyadic & and | for minimum and maximum (respectively) is because logical AND and logical OR are identical to minimum and maximum if the arguments happen to be boolean (0/1). The notation and selection of primitives illustrate a useful and memorable symmetry.

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