Case sensitive and ludicrous statements

[Cy Edmunds]

"Mark Jackson" <mjackson at alumni.caltech.edu> wrote in message
news:br0m9h$qn2$1 at news.wrc.xerox.com...
> "Robert Brewer" <fumanchu at amor.org> writes:
> > Douglas Alan wrote:
> > > IfCamelCaseWereAGoodIdeaEvenInACaseSensitiveLanguage,thenPeopl
> > > eWouldWriteLike
> > > ThisAllTheTime.
> >
> > The Greeks did that quite often. Some ideas take time.
>
> [.sig from February 1993]
>
> Re. CamelCase and SmallTalk:  ISTR that the Alto keyboard lacked an
> underscore character (I believe the character code was used for
> left-arrow, which I vaguely recall was used for assignment in BCPL
> and/or Mesa).  As constructions like foo_bar are the obvious
> alternative to FooBar, could this lack have been a factor at PARC?
>
> -- 
> Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
>   Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about
the tenth
>   century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the
practice.
> - Sun FORTRAN Reference Manual
>
>

You're right Mark. Mesa mapped the underscore to left arrow, which was used
for assignment. I suppose this was an improvement over Pascal's := except
that ItMadeYouWriteLikeThis.

-- 
Cy
http://home.rochester.rr.com/cyhome/