There's been a bit of serious study on this. The results are still open to interpretation, though ;-) Here's a nice summary:
http://whathecode.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/camelcase-vs-underscores-scientific-showdown/ of-course-dashes-are-most-natural-ly y'rs - tim On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 11:59 PM, Barry Warsaw <ba...@python.org> wrote: >> I will say this: the original preference for underscore_names in PEP 8 was >> spurred by user studies some of our early non-native English speaking users >> conducted many years ago. We learned that it was more difficult for many of >> them to parse mixedCase names than underscore_names. I'm afraid I probably >> no >> longer have references to those studies, but the difference was pronounced, >> IIRC, and I think it's easy to see why. Underscores can be scanned by the >> eye >> as spaces, while I'd hypothesize that the brain has to do more work to read >> mixedCase names. > > Underscores also play much more nicely with initialisms. How would you > spell a function named "Add HTTP Header"? > > add_HTTP_header > add_http_header > > addHTTPHeader > addHttpHeader > > Four options to choose from. The first two clearly separate the > initialism from the other words; take your pick whether you want it > uppercased or not, because it's separated either way. In mixedCase, > the first one merges the H of Header in with HTTP; with something less > well known, that can be a nasty readability problem. The second one is > probably more readable, but looks weird. Or, here's another one: > converting one thing into another, where both are named by their > initials: > > convert_XML_to_JSON > convert_xml_to_json > > convertXMLToJSON > convertXmlToJson > > Same four options. Which is the more readable? > > ChrisA > _______________________________________________ > Python-Dev mailing list > Python-Dev@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev > Unsubscribe: > https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/tim.peters%40gmail.com _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com