Does anyone know of studies investigating the effect of casing on readability of program source code?
You may find some useful data in this book:
Baecker, R.M. and A. Marcus (1990). Human Factors and Typography for More Readable Programs. Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. (ACM Press).
I don't have it in front of me to confirm, but I think casing is one of the criteria they discuss. They did conduct at least one empirical study, and the book includes a review of other empirical evidence. Here are some excerpts from my notes:
"...we have presented and explored a wide variety of issues affecting the legibility and readability of C program source text. ... We began by developing taxonomies of visible language and of [C]. We then presented some graphic design principles and some design variations. We used the variations to explore methods of applying the design principles to achieve an effective visual presentation of C. This presentation is described by a graphic design manual for C, which consists of a set of graphic design guidelines and a set of detailed typographic specifications. ... We believe that the approach and many of the concrete recommendations for C can be transferred to other programming languages. We must advise...however, that the task will require extremely careful attention to each languages's unique characteristics. By studying these characteristics, it will be possible to design effective visualizations that take advantage of visible language and of the computer language's full potential. ... One of the primary difficulties encountered in making graphic design evaluations is that we have only very limited theories and understanding of programmers' tasks, motivations, strategies, and capabilities in reading, comprehending, and using code. As a result, it is not yet possible to base decisions among functionally equivalent appearances on any scientific criteria. We present and review...what we had been able to find or produce in the way of experimental evidence on the advantages and disadvantages of our conventions."
A related paper:
Baecker, R. (1986). Design Principles for the Enhanced Presentation of Computer Program Source Text. Proceedings of CHI'86 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. M. Mantei and P. Orbeton. Boston, ACM: 51-58.
John Pane
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