I mean, before I even read beyond the summary here, "subjects were trained mainly in the underscore style " and "subjects recognize identifiers in the underscore style more quickly." are pretty telling.
@cachondo They admit that factor, but it’s not the whole story. They refer to an earlier study where the subjects “were mostly trained in the *camel-case style*” where the result was similar, but not as pronounced (13.5% vs 20%): “Comparing this result to the original study, we can say that with more experience (training), the effect of identifier style on performance is reduced, but not eliminated.”
![Screenshot of an excerpt from Section 5, Discussion:
In response to the research questions posed in Section II, we find that identifier style significantly affects time and visual effort needed to correctly detect identifiers constructed from a phrase. The underscore style is significantly faster and positively influences the dependent variables. In the Binkley et al. study [4], Phrase Length did not interact with Style, however we find such an interaction in our analysis. The common theme in both experiments is that camel-cased identifiers take longer than underscored ones (13.5% in the previous study and 20% in this study) overall. In the Binkley et al. study, higher accuracy was found for camel-cased identifiers, however, in our study, all (except one) subjects answered correctly on all questions making accuracy comparisons irrelevant.
In our study, no interaction effects were found between the Experience secondary factor and the independent variable Style. The previous study found Training (vis-à-vis Experience in our study) to significantly interact with Style affecting the time to find an identifier. Their findings indicate that subjects trained in the camel-case style take less time to identify a camel-cased identifier than an underscore identifier.](https://fedi.ml/photo/preview/640/684070 "Screenshot of an excerpt from Section 5, Discussion:
In response to the research questions posed in Section II, we find that identifier style significantly affects time and visual effort needed to correctly detect identifiers constructed from a phrase. The underscore style is significantly faster and positively influences the dependent variables. In the Binkley et al. study [4], Phrase Length did not interact with Style, however we find such an interaction in our analysis. The common theme in both experiments is that camel-cased identifiers take longer than underscored ones (13.5% in the previous study and 20% in this study) overall. In the Binkley et al. study, higher accuracy was found for camel-cased identifiers, however, in our study, all (except one) subjects answered correctly on all questions making accuracy comparisons irrelevant.
In our study, no interaction effects were found between the Experience secondary factor and the independent variable Style. The previous study found Training (vis-à-vis Experience in our study) to significantly interact with Style affecting the time to find an identifier. Their findings indicate that subjects trained in the camel-case style take less time to identify a camel-cased identifier than an underscore identifier.")
Sean Randall
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