That's precisely the point. The whole philosophy of APL is that it's not supposed to be obvious to anyone who doesn't (yet) know it. However, seeing as the character set is still Latin, it's not hard to guess at what it does even if you don't know the language.

- I don't see 'vs' in the snippet, but would guess V stands for Vector.

- Even in all but the most anal "standard style guides", single-character names are normal for temporary/limited-scope variable names.

- You could likewise ask why Chinese words aren't separated by spaces, or why English words need to be. It's a different language with its own grammar and style.

I don't know APL either, but at least I make an effort to see their perspective on the language, because it is clear that there are people who are highly proficient at working with code like this. (Likewise, I would guess that experienced APL'ers probably find more "traditional" languages like C, Java, Python, etc. "unreadably" verbose.)

But isn't the real question whether that obviousness is more important than ease of comprehension and maintenance for someone who does have the required skills to work on the code?

To a child who has just learned squares and square roots and who has never encountered TeX, the expression $e^{i\theta}=\cos\theta+i\sin\theta$ is probably just line noise. To a practising mathematician, it is immediately recognisable and a useful tool. Obviously the difference is that the experienced mathematician has learned the underlying concepts and the notation to represent them. The result is that while the teenager might be learning double-angle formulae by rote for their trigonometry exam in a few years, the experienced mathematician could use their more powerful tool to derive those formulae or any variations on the theme in moments whenever they need them. Their greater skill and understanding makes them much more capable.

There are certainly reasonable arguments for making the code for some projects accessible to new developers, but doing that isn't free if it also means compromising some aspect of that code for current developers. It's a trade-off, and sometimes requiring new developers to have a certain level of skill and understanding before they can work on a project is OK.

1. It matters how much code you can see and work with at a time.

2. This code is using research level new algorithms for solving certain problems in the core compiler that are not a part of the standard toolbox of most programmers, and so, even if you did have the code laid out differently, it wouldn't necessarily be any easier. An early version of one of these new algorithms has been published and is listed in the set of publications:

https://github.com/arcfide/Co-dfns#publications

3. As mentioned above, keeping this code at the same semantic density as the core compiler allows you to read this code in much the same way that you can read the compiler code, making it easier to jump back and forth whenever you want throughout any point in the compiler and not adjust to multiple languages. This applies to the use of single characters.

4. The letters v, z, and s are all semantically meaningful to those working in APL, but they are also globally standardized "for the most part" throughout the compiler so that you know what we are talking about whenever the letter "z" shows up anywhere in the compiler. There are some exceptions, but these are obvious, and local, and can be that way because the use site and definition site are within a couple of lines of each other. So, yes, it's quickly obvious from the context.

5. I have tried many, many times to introduce comments. They almost never help, and almost always hurt.

6. If I were to change the style, it might be easier to understand what a given snippet is doing, but this wouldn't aid in your ability to understand what the whole compiler is doing or how it all fits together. It would be a false sense of understanding because it would be divorced from the broader context. The point of the design the way it is is to encourage you to focus on the macro level design issues, and allow you to see the whole context of the whole compiler more easily.