Abstract Prefix Notation (APN): A Type-Encoding Naming Methodology for Programming

This paper introduces Abstract Prefix Notation (APN), a systematic naming methodology that encodes logical type information directly into identifiers across all programming languages. APN addresses a fundamental challenge in software development: the gap between how programmers think during active coding and how they (or others) understand code months later. By embedding abstract type information-numbers, strings, booleans, objects, arrays, functions-directly into variable and function names, APN creates selfdocumenting code that remains comprehensible in any context: plain text editors, printed paper, code reviews, or terminal output.