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

[Remco Gerlich]

François Pinard wrote in comp.lang.python:
> "Juergen A. Erhard" <jae at ilk.de> écrit:
> 
> > Actually, I couldn't even name a case-insensitive language offhand... and
> > I doubt they are really easier than case sensitive ones.
> 
> Some among the oldest FORTRANs, maybe.  COBOL, I don't know.  Scheme.  HTML.

Pascal (therefore, Delphi). Visual Basic.

Oddly enough, some people still use Delphi and VB.

> I never saw the advantage of case confusion (oops! insensitiveness :-).

I think it's easier to read. Some good entries in the IOCCC made beautiful
abuse of case sensitivity, using sixteen variable names called case, Case,
cAse, CAse, caSe, et cetera. With single characters, (ie, 'x' and 'X') the
difference is obvious enough, but bugs where you have ie NrOfIdLists and
then NrOfIdlists a page down are irritating. Besides, it's apparently easier
to use for newbies, who have never learned that 'Friend' and 'friend' are
completely unrelated words.

Anyway, I don't care much. The "x = X()" idiom is nice, but not sacred. The
advantages and disadvantages aren't so big, really. I've never heard people
ask for it in C, I've never heard people complain about it in Delphi.

This is all just FUD, in my opinion. Py3K is years away, and people are
already saying their company can't take Python seriously anymore...

Some other things, i.e. the oddities in 1.6's Unicode support seem a lot more
relevant at this moment.

-- 
Remco Gerlich,  scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl
  8:21pm  up 76 days,  8:35,  8 users,  load average: 0.10, 0.03, 0.01