Say what you want, but it's better than how mathematicians choose names imho.
For example in graph algorithms, I used to write descriptive names like:
weight = adjacenyMatrix[node][neighbor]
w = G[u][v]
It's basically the same reason why people don't name their indices "index" and instead use "i", "j", "k". And instead of point.first and point.second, you use point.x and point.y.
Naming conventions are awesome when people can agree on them.
This zealotry a lot of devs have over descriptive names needs boundaries.
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.
https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/where-does-the-...