On 12/02/03 13:52, Peter McKenna wrote:
In spite of programmers' fondness for non-alphabetical characters, surely
fooBarBaz is more readable than foo_bar_baz?!
<span mode="boggle">
IFindItHardToSeeWhyInternalCapitalisationShouldBeObviouslyMoreReadable.
</span>
Humans - even programmers -
are more accustomed to reading words without underscores (which are not
always easy to see anyway).
Good,_it_makes_them_get_out_of_the_way_of_the_letters.
Dots.can.be.good.too,.where.they're.allowed.
Besides, fooBarBaz has two fewer characters to type!
<span mode="spock">
Ah, but the needs of the many [readers' eyeballs] outweigh the needs
of the few [typing fingers]. Or the one [lazy programmer].
</span>
I was initially slightly surprised that no-one's mentioned Baecker and
Marcus's 'Human Factors and Typography for More Readable Programs'. But
I just skimmed through it, and they don't actually seem to address
Stephen's direct question at all, despite having lots of other
examples and assertions to do with readability and presentation.
A quick glance at the other stuff on our bookshelves didn't
reveal anything that looked obviously better.
But the book does have a lengthy set of references (with more entries
for some guy called Green than some other guy called Knuth), so that
might be a useful starting point. Or you could look up subsequent
work by the authors and their cohort, since they showed an interest
in this stuff a whille ago:
Ronald Baecker, Aaron Marcus, Ilona Posner, Hugh Redelmeier, Alan
Rosenthal, Cynthia Wong.
As a matter of pure nosiness, Stephen, is there a wider
problem you're trying to address?
--
Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED] (And don't call me Shirley.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce
PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
