Case-sensitivity: why -- or why not? (was Re: Damnation!)

[Marko Samastur]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
>     http://www.alice.org/advancedtutorial/ConwayDissertation.PDF
> 
> some relevant quotes:
>
>     "Python is case sensitive. While we, as programmers, were com-
>     fortable with this language feature, our user community suffered
>     much confusion over it. At least 85% of users who were observed
>     using the Alice tutorial made a case error at some point during the
>     experience. While explaining the case rule was simple enough
>     ("upper and lower case mean different things to Alice"), this was
>     not sufficient to instill a "case aware" sense in our users.  Of the
>     users who had problems with case, most continued to type case-
>     incorrect tokens in their programs for a short period. Coming to
                                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^

Part of every learning is making mistakes. Nobody picked up a bicycle
and knew how to ride it immediately. 
If you make certain mistake only for a short period of time, I'd say
whatever you are trying to do was quite well designed.

Marko

P.S: As mathematician I too quite like expressiveness that comes with
case sensitivity. I also dislike the idea that integer math could go
away.