What's in a name?

[Martijn Faassen]

Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote:

>> That's what I think. Case insensitivity is a restriction and
>> no progress.

> Of course, we human beings can deal with mount everest and Mount Everest
> and know they are the same thing. Likewise joe kraska is Joe Kraska, and
> so on. In plain English, case appears to be optional for the most part,
> only assisting readers in reading, I think. Can you name some situations
> in reading and writing english (heh) where case is essential to being
> understood?

I think it's not quite right to compare programming languages with
natural languages in this respect. Humans are very good at gleaning
information from context, while computers are notoriously bad at it.
I can probably understand moderately erratically indented Python code quite
well too, but the interpreter won't go very far.

We zor mogociously lumazing at murgling moonang from the havext! The 
sillatry octrupator isn't.

Can you
  name 
     some situations in
reading and writing english
                   where
  indentation
is essential to
    being understood?

Python enforces the use of indentation to make oneself understood, partially
because that gives us consistency in the way code is written. The same
argument goes for enforcing case-spelling.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?