As a further intensifying point, this is why Djikstra spent so long making sure he understood and communicating ALGOL and FORTRAN and the like so well. He wanted to explore new notations and needed to be absolutely clear how they worked.

This is similarly why Milner, Tofte, Harper, MacQueen completely specified the behavior of SML. [0]

[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Definition-Standard-ML-Revised/dp/...