In a lot of computational math, operations research, such as algorithm design for optimization problems and the like, authors like to use $$\langle \cdot, \cdot \rangle$$ as opposed to $$(\cdot)^T (\cdot)$$

Even when the space is clearly Euclidean and the operation is clearly the dot product. What is the benefit or advantage for doing so? Is it so that the notations generalize nicely to other spaces?

Update: Thank you for all the great answers! Will take a while to process...