Why is it that sometimes x means multiply, sometimes a dot or * means multiply and sometimes the absence of any symbol means multiply? Why the fuck didn’t we standardize a dedicated symbol for multiply?
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The symbol for multiplication is not x, it’s ×. The problem is it’s really freaking hard to differentiate the two sometimes, and that’s a problem when the most common letter for a variable is x. So the · became used for multiplication as well. On computers we use * because computers used to have a pretty small number of symbols they could use and we didn’t want confusion of x. We didn’t want to use x (it’s a letter, remember), and * was the closest character to either × or · in that small number of symbols, so we chose that.
As for the absence of a symbol meaning multiply, it turns out writing things like 2*a+3*b+8*x is kind of a pain in the ass. While we have PEMDAS, but it’s still annoying to read. 2a+3b+8x is easier to parse.
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