That being said, I'm not convinced that the extremely minimal syntax is essential. I think it can be done another way ;)
I'd say the minimal syntax isn't just a gimmick, because it really does help with mentally chunking phrases/idioms to a degree that's not possible when the same phrases are multiple lines long. Terseness also makes it physically faster to write the same thing, which encourages interactive experimentation much more than other languages.
These are small things, but taken together you get an experience that's more than the sum of its parts.
A lot of folks seem to tolerate K syntax because K jobs pay well. (Supposedly. I've never seen a super-high paying K job in real life.) But I actually like the K syntax because it helps organize my problem solving, and it gets out of the way during experimentation time. To me it's like NumPy/Pandas but better designed and without all the ceremonial boilerplate.
- Use a language that minimizes the code to write
- Use a helper function, maybe at some runtime cost
- Use a macro, turning a short piece of code into a longer one, at a compile-time cost
Having a DTI (debt-to-income ratio) macro and a very short definition of DTI that looks similar everywhere in code sort of do the same thing.
I should make a ranked list.
In regards to programming, my top 30 would include:
ScrollSets: https://breckyunits.com/scrollsets.html
RegEx.
The dataflow paradigm as popularized by dplyr would be on there.
HIT ranking: https://breckyunits.com/hits.html