@neauoire I'm convinced that there's some preference for the amount of notation you can cram in a paper, and it's been rising for the past 40 years.

Most of my initial work on Modal was combing through notation-heavy papers found in obscure journals, where even the slightest glint of insight could be found.

The hard part was piecing together the good parts from the huge aggregate of literature. It's a habit that sticks with me even to this day.

@neauoire I can relate so much! I also feel dreadful when I have to write some of these papers sometimes. I got my own theory on how we got here which I'm happy to talk about in PMs.

But if you're looking for top quality entertaining papers in (functional) programming languages look for "Functional Pearls" in ICFP and JFP. The CfP states that the papers must be engaging, fun, and short-ish. Most of the time that is the case.