> you really don’t understand anything inside it except at the most superficial level
This is true, but:
- the name of the operator is typically a word that you can easily search for in the documentation or on the web, or with "jump to definition" in your editor, if it's something locally defined in the source tree.
- you usually understand the shape of what is inside it. You know what parts of the program you are looking at are arguments to that mysterious operator and which are not. If asked which expression is the third argument of that operator, you can easily find it and know where it begins and ends.
This is true, but:
- the name of the operator is typically a word that you can easily search for in the documentation or on the web, or with "jump to definition" in your editor, if it's something locally defined in the source tree.
- you usually understand the shape of what is inside it. You know what parts of the program you are looking at are arguments to that mysterious operator and which are not. If asked which expression is the third argument of that operator, you can easily find it and know where it begins and ends.