As a mathematician, sum(whatever) or product(whatever), reads just fine. There are in fact, a lot of uses of sums and products, so after a while, they are pretty naturally.
Yes, sum(whatever) is fine. What is "whatever"? If it's the common case of two operands, then I don't think you're making a point against a + b.
And you don't think (sum (mul a (minus b c)) d), or (+ (* a (- b c)) d) for that matter, is more readable than a * (b-c) + d, do you?
> There are in fact, a lot of uses of sums and products, so after a while, they are pretty naturally.
I think you are talking about summing up a collection (like, an array, a matrix, etc.) as opposed to building an expression tree. Of course, sum(myIntList) is just fine. That's a whole different story.
There are also the rare cases where you have to sum, like 6 integers. (sum a b c d e f) might not be worse than a + b + c + d + e + f. But that's by far not the common case in most problem domains. The common case is like a*(b-c) + d.
