&gt; <i>You should look at old school DSP code some time. :) Some of that is translating from variable names in mathematics papers.</i><p>I feel that is sort of a valid exception. If it is common notation in the field you need to be familiar with anyways or you are implementing from a specific source, <i>not</i> using short names adds another layer of mental translation. If I&#x27;m implementing an algorithm from a paper I put an &quot;implementation based on: &lt;citation&#x2F;URL&gt;&quot; on top and try to match it as closely as possible. (DSP code probably doesn&#x27;t do the latter, because performance, but where possible)