If only economists took some programming classes...

they'd know that they should give their variables meaningful names. When I'm reading a mathematically driven economics paper I spend half the time flipping through the pages trying to work out what the hell "U(x, a)" was meant to mean... If they'd attended even a couple of basic classes on programing then they'd know what a bad idea it is to use single letter names for variables and functions. The worst thing is getting three quarters of the way through a paper and they suddenly start using a variable that was defined at the beginning of the paper, and you now have absolutely no idea what it means.

If "H(w, a)" was called "agent-utility(wealth, agent-action)" then I wouldn't have to go rummaging through the paper to find where that function and those variables where defined, it would be obvious from the name! The world would be a much better place if economists where able to grasp the concept of meaningful variable names.

I *hate* double-spacing

Why is it standard practice in academia to publish so many things double-spaced? I find it not only harder to read double-spaced documents, they also waste so much more paper (not to mention being harder to carry around). Why does this practice persist?