An Eye Tracking Study on CamelCase and Under_score Identifier Styles [pdf]

cs.kent.edu

5 pointsedu4 comments

It’s interesting that: “results indicate no difference in accuracy between the two styles, subjects recognize identifiers in the underscore style more quickly.”

Precisely what I expected. Lisp uses-dashes-instead and I don't see that any harder to read_than_underlines.

I do find CamelCaseToBeCrowded, but in context, it is just fine.

It's nearly always a religious argument, but one could build a simple hierarchy by allowing them to be used together, as long as they are consistent.

CamelCaseToBeCrowded might not work in many Lisp dialects, since symbols may get case converted by the Lisp reader functions. In Common Lisp all symbols get upcased by default and one would have to escape a mixed-case symbol: |CamelCaseToBeCrowded| would preserve the case. Btw., |Camel Case To Be Crowded| would also be a legal identifier. Alternative: change the reader conversion mode.

Ah yes, multiple escape. I'm somewhat surprised you can't (setq *print-case* :camelcase), but I wouldn't ever use it anyway.

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