You seem to misunderstand the use of \ in LaTeX. It's not a separator, it's used to introduce a keyword.
Everything stems from the need to tell apart the text from the non-textual information, or structure. For example you don't add phrases like "the next word in italics" to mark parts of the document, because the reader will not understand if those are part of the text. Instead you must use either symbols that one wouldn't find in the text, like "*", or well-marked keywords, like "\em" or "<b>". Markdown prefers symbols, which look prettier for pure text, but unfortunately in maths nearly all symbols are already taken. LaTeX opted for keywords and chose a leading "\" to mark them, plus some rarely used symbols like "{" for grouping.
Asciimath uses neither uncommon symbols nor well-marked keywords, but rather words like "int" and common symbols like "(". I find it really confusing. In this way if you read "int", you don't immediately know if it stands for an integral sign or a function called "int" or the product of 3 variables called "i", "n", and "t". And when you find a pair of parentheses you don't know if they are part of the formula or if they were added just to group a subexpression.
I think this is called in-band signaling.
Asciimath does have some good points, though. The use of " to mark elements that must rendered as text and not maths is simple and effective. I tend to use it quite often for things like e (2.72), i (imaginary unit), d (differential) that are not variables and thus should be rendered with an upright roman font, not slanted or italics. LaTeX is worse because it forces you to write {\rm i} or \text{i}.
Everything stems from the need to tell apart the text from the non-textual information, or structure. For example you don't add phrases like "the next word in italics" to mark parts of the document, because the reader will not understand if those are part of the text. Instead you must use either symbols that one wouldn't find in the text, like "*", or well-marked keywords, like "\em" or "<b>". Markdown prefers symbols, which look prettier for pure text, but unfortunately in maths nearly all symbols are already taken. LaTeX opted for keywords and chose a leading "\" to mark them, plus some rarely used symbols like "{" for grouping.
Asciimath uses neither uncommon symbols nor well-marked keywords, but rather words like "int" and common symbols like "(". I find it really confusing. In this way if you read "int", you don't immediately know if it stands for an integral sign or a function called "int" or the product of 3 variables called "i", "n", and "t". And when you find a pair of parentheses you don't know if they are part of the formula or if they were added just to group a subexpression.
I think this is called in-band signaling.
Asciimath does have some good points, though. The use of " to mark elements that must rendered as text and not maths is simple and effective. I tend to use it quite often for things like e (2.72), i (imaginary unit), d (differential) that are not variables and thus should be rendered with an upright roman font, not slanted or italics. LaTeX is worse because it forces you to write {\rm i} or \text{i}.