Not only that, but screen space was really limited back then; it was not uncommon to develop on terminals with as low as 80 columns and 24 lines. Having shorter names meant more of the code could fit on the screen at the same time.
Historically there was a bifurcation between scientific/technical computing and business computing. The former wanted to write something close to E = mc², while the latter wanted `MULTIPLY MASS-IN-GRAMS TIMES SPEED-OF-LIGHT-IN-A-VACUUM-IN-METERS-PER-SECOND TIMES SPEED-OF-LIGHT-IN-A-VACUUM-IN-METERS-PER-SECOND GIVING ENERGY-IN-JOULES`. With the dotcom boom, the last vestiges of the old republic were finally swept away, and now even C programmers get slapped for writing `c`.
I still develop on a terminal with 80 columns, to this day!
...but it has 96 rows, and there are five of them, side by side across my monitor. Definitely an improvement! - but I still prefer not to have long rambling Java-style identifiers.
