A software engineer suggesting that math should adopt the practices of software engineering sounds a lot like someone trying to generalize their domain into another domain; and saying that they know better then the domain experts in the field they are generalizing into.
Occasionally they are right. Most of the time however, the domain experts are right.
As I said in another comment[1], I'm not even talking about software engineering, just a good practices of everyday programming.
Could you please tell me why do you think that the name `x` is better than `element` (when talking about some set), the name `X` is better than `training_set`, and the `∑` is better than `sum`?
Well, it's not just about who is right and who is wrong, not in this case. Comparing industry practices with those of scientific (especially theoretical) research may not make much sense. Plus, if you consider the way software is actually developed, you will see that the kind of honesty that is required or assumed in regard to a scientist cannot be practically expected from today's software engineer. Engineering is all about compromises, while science is not.
