In maths, you usually write "where x is ..., y is ... etc." after equations where what the symbols represent isn't abundantly obvious anyway. Likewise, when pr

In maths, you usually write "where x is ..., y is ... etc." after equations where what the symbols represent isn't abundantly obvious anyway. Likewise, when programming, if I reuse some variable very often in a short space, I will temporarily rename it to something single-lettered, e.g. "s = volumeScalingFactor; x = s; y = s; z *= s". I think maths style vs. programming style is only one factor here, with the other simply being this application of DRY: describe one-off things well, but shorten their names if they're oft-repeated within a given context. Maths tends to reuse the same variable for a lot of different operations in a single context whereas programming doesn't as much, which naturally leads to this single-letter name vs. long name difference in styles.