Only my own personal pet peeve there ewook. I personally HATE it when other coders use it outside of Golfing.

Just about impossible to do a valid SEARCH / REPLACE of $ in a script. Using $_ would be so much better in my opinion or a real name that sort of gives some type of meaning as to why the var exists.

Most people though use the $ by it'self cause it's very quick and easy to type for a small 2 or 3 liner snippet of code. I on the other hand avoid it like the plague even with 3 liner code (but alas - I'm alone out in the deep sea with that I suppose)