In computer science, we straddle this divide where the usual way to describe things in scientific literature is using algebraic notation, but the usual way to actually write up a program is to use meaningful variable names. It's not K_i, it's current_gains or something like that. It leads to a funny kind of style where especially computer science-related fields start writing K_{current} in scientific manuscripts, and are then chided because that is not how you use subscripts. The reverse is also true, theory-adjacent code tends to use a lot more terse naming conventions.
I often work with a guy who's a pure computer scientist. He communicates in LaTeX and pseudocode only. I don't think he could find a compiler if he tried. What I've learned to do is keep his notation whenever I implement something. I start the function with a comment that says what paper I'm referencing when I implement it and then comment all of the one-letter variables. (In this case I would use K[i]).
Usually the stuff I'm implementing is complicated enough that reading the code without reading the paper won't have much meaning. And if you're reading the paper, it's good to have as close to a 1-1 representation to help give confidence that I implemented it right.
I've had non-zero times where I took his pseudocode, pasted it into my IDE and did a search and replace of begin/end to braces and "<-" to "=" and it "just worked" on the first try. I always found that amazing that he could write this stuff without ever trying it (outside of his head).
