One thing that seems to be a net win in scientific programming as well as graphics programming is a method to view code that renders sub and subscripts and unicode characters (as in Fortress). This doesn't reduce the number of nodes required, but it does improve readability substantially. Since reading code is often harder than writing it, and since scientific and graphics code is ordinarily extremely hard to read, and improvement to readability helps.

Adding very powerful and general capabilities to syntax, as Fortress does, also reduces the number of nodes required, but I've yet to determine whether the added complexity is worth it.