Some of these could be tested among college students or high-school students. Let students form groups and participate in a tournament. Make the task complex enough that the tournament requires sustained work (e.g., 12 weeks). Then randomly assign coding practices to the participating groups and evaluate:
> Do doctest-style tests (i.e., tests embedded directly in the code being tested) have any impact long-term usability or maintainability compared to putting tests in separate files?
> Has anyone analyzed videos of coding clubs for children or teens to see if girls are treated differently than boys by instructors and by their peers?
> Has anyone ever studied students from the first year to the final year of their program to see what tools they actually start using when. In particular, when (if ever) do they start to use more advanced features of their IDE (e.g., “rename variable in scope”)?
> Do doctest-style tests (i.e., tests embedded directly in the code being tested) have any impact long-term usability or maintainability compared to putting tests in separate files?
> Has anyone analyzed videos of coding clubs for children or teens to see if girls are treated differently than boys by instructors and by their peers?
> Has anyone ever studied students from the first year to the final year of their program to see what tools they actually start using when. In particular, when (if ever) do they start to use more advanced features of their IDE (e.g., “rename variable in scope”)?