Case Sensitivity and Learnability

[Carel Fellinger]

Will Rose <cwr at crash.cts.com> wrote:
> Tres Seaver <tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com> wrote:
> : Thinking about the notion of case sensitivity as a barrier to CP4E, as
...
> Your arguments are reasonable, but they are arguments against systems
> which are both case-insensitive _and_ case-preserving.  The trouble with
> CI/CP is that the compiler sees a different set of tokens from those seen
> by the programmer, and it's sometimes difficult for the programmer to

I don't think he is refering to this part of the problem. Swapping case at
random *on its own* makes the source hard to read, let alone this confusing
of what you see and what the compiler sees.

> realise this.  If unskilled programmers find case too difficult or
> distracting, the cure is to force a single case, either upper or lower. 
> This could be done by an (optional?) compiler switch.

this would make it impossible to import library modules that do depend on
case distinction. Or would it be a per module switch, settable in the source?
Now that will improve things:)

I, for one, vehemently dislike case insensitive languages, as they force me
to use ugly naming conventions like:

  class tv_class: pass 
  tv = tv_class()

yack, instead of the much clearer:

  class TV: pass
  tv = TV()

Admitted you have to know this convention of using case to distinct classes
from variables:), but then in natural language we use this same trick to
distinguish persons from objects like in Bill and bill. So how hard can it
be for a newbie:) OTOH, I'm easily convinced by proper usability studies.

-- 
groetjes, carel