Case Sensitivity and Learnability

[Thomas Wouters]

On Sun, Jan 30, 2000 at 06:13:45PM +0000, Neel Krishnaswami wrote:

> Well, I'd prefer Python to be case-insensitive, just as a matter of my
> own preference. Eyeball grep is for me basically case-insensitive, and
> I have spent hours trying to find bugs caused by case errors, because
> my eyes just slide over the difference.

Funny, my eyeball grep is decidedly case-sensitive. N and n look very
differently, and I scan them very differently, too. I sooner have trouble
with 'I', 'l', '1' and in some fonts 'i', or '0' and 'O' and in some fonts
'Q'. On my old Atari ST I used to have a perfect screen font (which came
with the Warp 9 screen accelerator) but unfortunately I have not been able
to find an adequate substitute on any of the UNIX or Windows systems i've
been working on, and I've been looking for over 5 years now ;)

I personally think python should not be case insensitive (not that I fear
that, though.) -- I like to think 'when names _look_ different, they _are_
different.'. It's just when they look alike that I have to doublecheck for
'1's and 'l's and such ;)

Courier-bold-1y y'rs,
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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