[Edu-sig] On case sensitivity

[Kirby Urner]

If case sensitivity is a big problem for non-CS
Alice programmers, my first response would be 
to front load the intro with plenty of warnings
to students that they'll likely introduce bugs
by forgetting about such sensitivity.  But I
wouldn't make the sensistivity go away necessarily,
as this would encourage laziness and bad habits.

Truth to tell:  most sophisticated programming
languages care about case.  If they hand hold,
trying to catch bugs of this nature, that's great,
but at the end of the day, SPAM, Spam and spam
are three different names, and should be allowed
to co-exist if that's trully the author's intent.

I happen to write a lot of code in Xbase, which
does NOT care about case.  I've gotten comfortable
with this and sometimes stumble in a case sensitive
environment.  But I've never whined about it.  The
problem is MY reflex-conditioning, not someone
else's.

Kirby