Interesting example. In Mathematica, they opted for fully spelled out function names with caps to indicate new words for minimal ambiguity. For example LinearSolve is not linsolve or lnsolve or lsolve or even ls as it is in other languages or libraries. This makes the names of standard mathematical functions easier to remember or guess at.

Your minima may not be my minima!

Sure, but to be charitable to edw519, it's possible to interpret the remark as "can be shortened ... without compromising meaning".

Definitely, that's why i said i agreed with the general sentiment. I generally reason in exactly the same way so i understand from where GP is coming from.

Here's an example regarding this that affects me in javascript -

var t = this;

and then every time I refer to 't', I save 3 bytes. It's something js compressors can't do, and every byte counts in the end :)