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

[Huaiyu Zhu]

On Sun, 21 May 2000 11:44:08 GMT, Fredrik Lundh <effbot at telia.com> wrote:
>
>    "During the course of development, we tried very hard not to
>    modify the Python language. /.../ Unfortunately, we were ulti-
>    mately forced to abandon pure Python when testing revealed
>    two flaws in the language that made Python unusable by our
>    target audience: integer math and case sensitivity."

Why is case sensitivity a language barrier for those who don't want it?
If you don't want two cases, choose one and use that one alone.
On the other hand, case insensitivity can be a big headache for people who
need two cases.

>    "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
>    terms with case sensitivity is a difficult skill for many to learn, a
>    fact that can often be lost on experienced programmers."

This quotation alone proves nothing wrong with case sensitivity.
It might just be that Alice uses a difficult or inconsistent style for case.

Have they tried only using lower case for names in Alice? 

Have they tried automatic lower case for anything the user entered? 

Those who favor case insensitivity seem to argue for two things:
(1) It is really important to write things in different case.
(2) Case should not matter to compilers.

Or is there something else that I missed?

-- 
Huaiyu Zhu                               hzhu at knowledgetrack.com