Databases
StackOverflow2013
Postsdbo
POExperimental research findings on white space (for language design and style guides)?
 

Note that there are some explanatory texts on larger screens.

plurals
  1. POExperimental research findings on white space (for language design and style guides)?
    primarykey
    data
    text
    <p>What does experimental research say about white space in code? Let me be specific: I'm talking about cognitive studies that compare how quickly and effectively people can read and grasp visual information that comes across in different formats.</p> <p>Let's say you were designing a new computer language and had to make some decisions that affect how the source code <em>looks</em>. Or you were simply writing a style guide for a new language and wanted to make recommendations. Relevant topics might be identifier style (snake_cased_identifiers vs. camelCaseIdentifiers / PascalCaseIdentifiers), horizontal indentation, documentation styles, or vertical spacing.</p> <p>I'm intentionally asking this question in this way to avoid recommendations such as:</p> <ul> <li>"it doesn't matter (without justification for the claim)"</li> <li>"do what the community already recommends for language X."</li> </ul> <p>I don't want a flame war between people that support differing approaches; rather, I'd like to know what <strong>experimental research</strong> has to say about the matter. (And I don't expect any particular study to necessarily be completely 'objective' or 'neutral'.)</p> <p>To give a 'squishier' motivation for this question: People appreciate white space in code, when reading documents, and in art (such as listening to music). These fields all put a big emphasis on the importance of space.</p> <p>So, thanks, I'd appreciate to hear what the studies have to say. To be clear, I'm not ruling out the importance of style and art -- I actually would hope that the wisdom from these worlds will show up in experimental studies.</p> <p>In summary, if you can, please touch on one or more of the following:</p> <ul> <li>variable naming convention</li> <li>horizontal indentation</li> <li>horizontal alignment (align the equal signs across multiple lines?)</li> <li>vertical spacing</li> </ul>
    singulars
    1. PO
      singulars
      1. PTAnswer
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. PTQuestion
    1. USThinkingStiff
    1. USDavid J.
    plurals
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. This table or related slice is empty.
    1. PO
      singulars
      1. PTAnswer
    2. PO
      singulars
      1. PTAnswer
    1. VO
      singulars
      1. POExperimental research findings on white space (for language design and style guides)?
      1. USDavid J.
      1. VTBountyStart
    2. VO
      singulars
      1. POExperimental research findings on white space (for language design and style guides)?
      1. This table or related slice is empty.
      1. VTUpMod
    3. VO
      singulars
      1. POExperimental research findings on white space (for language design and style guides)?
      1. This table or related slice is empty.
      1. VTUpMod
    1. COWRT camelCase vs. snake_case, it depends on the case sensitivity of the language. In C you can 'enforce' aCamelCasedFunction where in PHP acamelcasedfunction will work just as well. So, for case-insensitive languages, using underscores is probably more legible in practice.
      singulars
      1. POExperimental research findings on white space (for language design and style guides)?
      1. USBink
 

Querying!

 
Guidance
A row detail

Detail views are divided into sections. All the information in the data section comes from columns in the selected row. The other sections display data from other, related rows.

Related data can be related in a to-one or a to-many fashion. Captions of data related in a to-many fashion link to a list view showing a filtered view of the table.

Try moving around until you find a non-empty to-many entry and click on the label to get to one. You can move back to the root by clicking on the database name in the header.

SQuiL has stopped working due to an internal error.

If you are curious you may find further information in the browser console, which is accessible through the devtools (F12).

Reload