English is the langua franca of programming. If you want your solution accepted, you have to meet your audience where they are.
In similar fashion, when engines were first invented and were being sold to miners, they didn't expect miners to understand the scientific terms around energy, they invented a term that could be easily understood: horsepower. Every miner could wrap their head around the work that twenty horses could do.
Here, x̄ or μ may mean average, but how do you pronounce either? Most are unfamiliar. Identifiers "avg()" or "average()" are more approachable, and already in use in spreadsheets for similar reasons.
I am not an English native speaker, but learned programming before even starting with learning English. In my head, the English keywords used in programming languages are thus just abstract (mathematical) symbols that are incidentally also English words.
As part of my work, I also work with Russian programmers, who, as long as they lived in Russia, hardly ever had to understand anything in English as part of their programming job ("Russia is so big that it is not necessary to learn English"). Just to be clear: they nevertheless attempted to learn English while living in Russia, but because of of intellectual interest, and not because it was necessary or helpful for their programming jobs. I heard rumors that a similar stance holds for China.
Thus: English may be the lingua franca of programming in North America and some European countries, but clearly not worldwide.
> the English keywords used in programming languages are thus just abstract (mathematical) symbols that are incidentally also English words
Explanation: People learn python without understanding meaning of keywords used. One must understand what ‘for’ means in python (i.e. repeated execution), but there is absolutly no necessity to understand what it means in English ( https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/for )
In similar fashion, when engines were first invented and were being sold to miners, they didn't expect miners to understand the scientific terms around energy, they invented a term that could be easily understood: horsepower. Every miner could wrap their head around the work that twenty horses could do.
Here, x̄ or μ may mean average, but how do you pronounce either? Most are unfamiliar. Identifiers "avg()" or "average()" are more approachable, and already in use in spreadsheets for similar reasons.