When I worked as an analyst in DoD, it was widely understood that acronyms would appear everywhere in everything we did, but also that it can confound a reader who bumps into an unfamiliar acronym if it appears out of nowhere in a report. The caution and best practice was to always give the full name the first time it is used, together with its acronym in parentheses. Then after that you are free to use the acronym as much as you want.

I doubt it would be controversial if programmers adopted a similar convention.