Is there any scientific evidence that the human brain can read and understand fully written variable names better/faster than abbreviated ones?LikePersistenceManager persistenceManager;in contrast toPersistenceManager pm;I have the impression that I get a better grasp of code that does not use abbreviations, even if the abbreviations would have been commonly used throughout the codebase. Can this individual feeling be backed up by any studies?
Scientific evidence that supports using long variable names instead of abbreviations?
language agnostic;coding style;naming
In Code Complete, Steve McConnell cites one study from 1990:Gorla, Benander and Benander found  that the effort required to debug a  program was minimized when variables  had names that averaged 10 to 16  characters ... Programs with names  averaging 8 to 20 characters were  almost as easy to debug. The guideline  doesn't mean that you should try to  make all of your variable names 9 to  15 or 10 to 16 characters long. It  does mean that if you look over your  code and see many names that are  shorter, you should check to be sure  that the names are as clear as they  need to be.Gorla, N., A.C. Benander, and B.A. Benander. 1990. Debugging effort estimation using software metrics. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-16, no. 2 (Februrary): 223-31.