It's a dynamic where each party can feel the need to cover one's own insecurities resulting in (unintentionally) invaliding the other party. One side aims to justify a sunk cost and the other to prove themselves and it becomes a chain reaction whereby everyone becomes engaged in ego defense/vuln attack until someone goes "wow you are really intelligent" and breaks the cycle.
I don't understand the reduction of all of math and CS to complaining about people who overindulge their notations. I've been reading this recently, and it just affirms how important and ubiquitous mathematical thinking is everywhere in life: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/How-Not-to-be-Wrong.