[ams6110]

Mathematical formulas don't use long variable names. They use x, y, and various greek letters.

[nl]

This is generally (amongst mathematicians) considered to be a problem, not a good thing (Source: work with university Math departments).

Edit, see http://mathoverflow.net/questions/8295/origins-of-mathematic... for the confusion this causes..

[maemre]

That might be because:

- you need to write same variable name on each step of derivation of a formula

- paper and blackboards don't have autocomplete

- juxtaposition is used for multiplication, thus SwapBlue can be Swap times Blue or a single variable called SwapBlue, spacing for multiplication is not a good solution when writing to board/paper

[Locke1689]

And despite lambda calculus being written entirely using single letter variable names, Scheme programmers all use proper word-size variable names in their programs.

Mathematics notation is so notoriously awful that mathematicians often can't even read equations from other disciplines without significant extra context.