The terseness is because it was originally developed to be written on a blackboard while lecturing.
As CS developed in the math world Iverson realized that the existing math was crap for describing computational processes. So he made his own and as it turned out it, with a little modification it was executable.
As CS developed in the math world Iverson realized that the existing math was crap for describing computational processes. So he made his own and as it turned out it, with a little modification it was executable.