&gt; you can see c.size() and think &quot;this is the size of the collection&quot;<p>If you see collection.size(), you don&#x27;t even need to think; the meaning is right there in your field of vision and you don&#x27;t need to dedicate one part of your extremely limited short-term memory to remembering what c stands for. I can&#x27;t see any advantage to shortening it to c, apart from saving a trivial amount of typing.