The annoying thing here is that you then have code littered with (even more) dollar signs. Now, at least for me (and I know I'm not alone here), my brain actua

The annoying thing here is that you then have code littered with (even more) dollar signs. Now, at least for me (and I know I'm not alone here), my brain actually has a harder time parsing that crap because it just looks like a bunch of spaghetti PHP. Focus on making your code well designed and structured; naming conventions are a band-aid on a larger problem, IMO.