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Comment by MrJohz | Hacker News Reader

> The results of Binkley’s study show that the use of camel case leads to higher accuracy among both programmers and non-programmers

Quotes like this always make me nervous about trusting a book, because these sorts of studies tend to be pretty difficult to replicate, or have very small effect sizes, or just be examples of poor research. Yet I see a lot of people use these sorts of studies to back up their opinions about what code should look like without really acknowledging how difficult it is to test these sorts of comparisons. As others in the comments here have pointed out, there are other studies that seem to say the complete opposite to the one quoted here, and I strongly suspect that there are far more important measures of readability, the effects of which would completely dwarf any discussion about case.

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There's a lot of this type of "bro-science" in the language learning community as well. And what you'll often find when you dig into any of these topics (programming, linguistics, weightlifting) there is usually solid science somewhere that everyone just kinds of ignores for the types of rules that just seem to "make sense" in some way.

And I think at the heart of it too is when you interrogate certain topics too much the answer will often boil down to "We don't know" and that's something that's really hard for people to grapple with if they're not used to admitting it.

What is bro-science?

Stuff that people in a community/scene tell each other and treat as facts that sounds like it could be a thing, regardless of it actually being true or not.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=broscience

What a terrible word. Either using gender purely as a pejorative modifier is ok or it isn't. Try "sistas-science" or even "wives-tales" as synonyms and see what that looks like.

There's plenty of alternatives. "Fake-science, Barnum-science, garbage-science, non-science, nonscience, TED-talk..." It's fertile ground to go all poetic too.

I think the term originated out of bodybuilding communities and is used in a humorous/self-deprecating way to label those "just trust me, bro" types of arguments. It's a bit weird seeing it used as a general term to refer to pseudo-science, but it feels appropriate under the original context.

"Either using gender purely as a pejorative modifier is ok or it isn't."

This is binary thinking, language is more flexible than this.

What's more, bro-science isn't purely pejorative, it's /descriptive/ of something that is happening as we speak on bodybuilding forums.

Afaik the term was invented by 'bros' for 'bros' as a way to caution against being too credulous when folks were discussing their personal training regime, supplement 'stack' or what have you with steroids and testosterone.

The closest term for it here in this forum would be 'trading anecdata' or 'Why we chose X to build Z-corp'.

For obvious reasons, they organically settled on 'bro-science' and it's fine for it to be that way.

Programmers often do the the same thing (replace 'supplement stack' with 'tech stack'), and for much the same reason as the gym 'bros', good data is hard to come by, but you need to muddle on and choose /something/.

Language is even flexible enough to be binary where that is appropriate. As indeed it is here.

> What's more, wives-tales isn't purely pejorative, it's /descriptive/ of something that is happening as we speak among married women.

Gentlemen who do body building, ladies who are married are not being described here. Choosing something better from the multitude of possibilities is hardly a blow for freedom, liberty and justice. The sun is gonna rise tomorrow. I can't see any reason not to do it and think it worthwhile if only to exercise our minds as to following principle. YMMV.

I don't think you understand language as much as you think you do. There are nuances terms acquire through usage that make them make more salient points than general terms such as "pseudoscience."

For example the term "wives-tales" isn't just about gender. It brings forth to mind ideas that are incorrect and passed down through generations as correct knowledge. The full phrase is generally used as "old wives tale"

The reason I used "bro-science" instead of a term like "pseudoscience" (or the other alternatives you mentioned) is because it came to mind first as it fits the nuance I'm going for. Which that nuance is not "Gentlemen who do body building." (As if only "gentlemen" do body building, ironically half of the body-builders I know are women). The nuance, if you're familiar with the term, is that it brings to mind something like "regular people who share opinions as if they're facts when they're actually opinions" (and they might be facts, but it's unknown). Or additionally it also brings in another nuanced meaning which is "an opinion that is shared by someone who expresses it strongly and reacts negatively if you question it"

Your alternatives may share some of this, but not in the same way. If you want to invent a new-term and get it into the lexicon I'd be happy to use it.

> The nuance, if you're familiar with the term, is that it brings to mind something like "regular people who share opinions as if they're facts when they're actually opinions"

I can't help you, sorry. I wonder what we did for all those centuries before "bro-science" was coined and heard by some of us here for the first time. I expect wives-tales was popular for some of it.

I guess some of us are unfortunately born as лох

You don't understand language as well as you think. The 'wife' in 'old wive's tales' doesn't refer to 'ladies who are married' at all. Your view that /either/ of the terms is purely pejorative exists only in your head.

> Quotes like this always make me nervous about trusting a book, because these sorts of studies tend to be pretty difficult to replicate, or have very small effect sizes, or just be examples of poor research.

That is precisely the main reason I got rid of my copy of Steve McConnell's "Code Complete".

Well.. but to me this one is easy to put in the "possible bikeshedding" category without throwing out all of the other ideas. Such as, even if someone _really_ proves one way or the other, is it really going to be such a big difference?

I prefer camel case but I am very skeptical about snake case being so much different. Anyway, that's really another type of thing from advice about making small tweaks versus comprehensive models (for example.).

I do wish we all would wait until a study is replicated to quote it. Or at the very least critically analyzed by the relevant expert community.

Studies that nobody talks about are probably a lot less likely to be replicated.

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