I find that as a piece of code skews more math- and geometric- centric, the variable names skew more towards math-like brevity as well. To some degree this is d

I find that as a piece of code skews more math- and geometric- centric, the variable names skew more towards math-like brevity as well. To some degree this is due to historical technical limitations (LAPACK and Fortran being one extreme -- dgbsv anyone?), but I see a ton of contemporary production code with one letter variable names. R is a rotation, n is a normal, p is momentum, whatever. I think a lot of the historical notation conventions carry over to code, and most peeps working in the domain day to day are down with whatever baggage is brought along. This is fine until you try to read francophone code... try reading a French a thesis and you'll find that they spur all conventions that the rest of the world has agreed upon :).