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

[richard_chamberlain]

I find it bizarre that case sensitivity would be the greatest hurdle to
CP4E.

When we teach our children to write we teach them case sensitivity, I do not
remember any governing body suggesting we should drop case sensitivity from
written language in order that 'everyone' will therefore be able to write.

I also cannot believe that this is a difficult lesson to learn.

How many times would you have to be told before you understood it? Once or
twice?

This is surely a better situation then having to rewrite a huge body of code
to correct everytime you used a=A().

rICHARD.

;)

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cppuqg4hsu.fsf_-_ at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> "Thomas Malik" <340083143317-0001 at t-online.de> writes:
>
> > I've just convinced our whole department (at a german bank) to use
Python
> > instead of Perl. A case - insensitive language won't be acceptable by
any of
> > us. So, Guido, should i start looking for another job ...?
>
> This is an example of what I meant when I said "voting doesn't help".
>
> You're saying it's unacceptable -- a vote.  But you don't say *why*
> you vote that way, so your vote gets multiplied by zero (rather than
> by the size of your department or the capital of your bank, as you
> seem to hope by bringing them into the argument :-).
>
> Here's a way to make your vote count: explain what it is about case
> sensitive languages that you hate.  Then we can have a discussion
> about it.
>
> I am a very case-sensitive person myself: it bothers me when people
> don't start their sentences with capital letters or when they refer to
> themselves as "i" in lowercase -- or when people refer to Python as
> "python" or "PYTHON".  (Come to think of it, it bothered me when you
> wrote "german" instead of "German" :-).
>
> Yet, here are some of the reasons why I am considering making Python
> case-insensitive:
>
> (1) Randy Pausch, a professor at CMU, found, when teaching Python to
> non-CS students in the context of Alice (www.alice.org), that the
> number one problem his students were having was to remember that case
> matters in Python.  (The number two problem was 1/2 == 0; there was no
> significalt number three problem.)
>
> (2) I've met many people who are experienced and accomplished Python
> programmers but who still, when referring to Python modules or
> functions in an informal context (e.g. email), make up their own case
> conventions.  E.g. people will write me about the String module or
> about FTPLib.
>
> I also know some of the things I plan to do to make the transition
> painless and to make the usual problems with case insensitivity more
> palatable.  E.g. I may add a case insensitivity feature to IDLE which
> makes sure that all identifiers are written in a consistent case, I
> may add flags to pre-Py3k Python interpreters to turn on case
> insensitivity or case sensitivity or a special warning mode.
>
> --
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)