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> The results of Binkley’s study show that the use of camel case leads to higher accuracy among both programmers and non-programmers Quotes like this always ma
by MrJohz 5y ago
> The results of Binkley’s study show that the use of camel case leads to higher accuracy among both programmers and non-programmers
Quotes like this always make me nervous about trusting a book, because these sorts of studies tend to be pretty difficult to replicate, or have very small effect sizes, or just be examples of poor research. Yet I see a lot of people use these sorts of studies to back up their opinions about what code should look like without really acknowledging how difficult it is to test these sorts of comparisons. As others in the comments here have pointed out, there are other studies that seem to say the complete opposite to the one quoted here, and I strongly suspect that there are far more important measures of readability, the effects of which would completely dwarf any discussion about case.
- diego_moita 5y ago> Quotes like this always make me nervous about trusting a book, because these sorts of studies tend to be pretty difficult to replicate, or have very small effect sizes, or just be examples of poor research. That is precisely the main reason I got rid of my copy of Steve McConnell's "Code Complete".
- doliveira 5y agoI do wish we all would wait until a study is replicated to quote it. Or at the very least critically analyzed by the relevant expert community.
- sva_ 5y agoStudies that nobody talks about are probably a lot less likely to be replicated.
- ilaksh 5y agoWell.. but to me this one is easy to put in the "possible bikeshedding" category without throwing out all of the other ideas. Such as, even if someone _really_ proves one way or the other, is it really going to be such a big difference? I prefer camel case but I am very skeptical about snake case being so much different. Anyway, that's really another type of thing from advice about making small tweaks versus comprehensive models (for example.).
- ethanwillis 5y agoThere's a lot of this type of "bro-science" in the language learning community as well. And what you'll often find when you dig into any of these topics (programming, linguistics, weightlifting) there is usually solid science somewhere that everyone just kinds of ignores for the types of rules that just seem to "make sense" in some way. And I think at the heart of it too is when you interrogate certain topics too much the answer will often boil down to "We don't know" and that's something that's really hard for people to grapple with if they're not used to admitting it.
- calsy 5y agoWhat is bro-science?
- detaro 5y agoStuff that people in a community/scene tell each other and treat as facts that sounds like it could be a thing, regardless of it actually being true or not. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=broscience https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=broscience
- harry8 5y agoWhat a terrible word. Either using gender purely as a pejorative modifier is ok or it isn't. Try "sistas-science" or even "wives-tales" as synonyms and see what that looks like. There's plenty of alternatives. "Fake-science, Barnum-science, garbage-science, non-science, nonscience, TED-talk..." It's fertile ground to go all poetic too.
- samsin 5y agoI think the term originated out of bodybuilding communities and is used in a humorous/self-deprecating way to label those "just trust me, bro" types of arguments. It's a bit weird seeing it used as a general term to refer to pseudo-science, but it feels appropriate under the original context.
- 5y ago