Yet Another Case Question

[Erik Max Francis]

David Mertz wrote:

> Certainly people indeed do this.  That part I can't argue against. 
> Tell
> me why this is BAD, again?  On the face of it, allowing such variation
> seems like the very purpose of case-insensitivity.

Is it good that there will now be inconsistent spellings, with each
programmer to a project contributing a different style?  Doesn't that
make it harder for everybody to read it?

> This point is reasonable.  I would get annoyed if CONSTANTS were
> spelled
> other than with uppercase.  Then again, I would also get annoyed in
> almost the same way if the convention were used inconsistently in
> Python, e.g.:
> 
>     CONSTANT1 = 22
>     constant2 = 38
> 
> That isn't exactly the same problem as Erik lists.. but it is
> analogous.
> And can only be eliminated by draconian style guides (or widespread
> enough commonsense... the best solution to the other problem too).

The difference is that in a case sensitive language, whoever created the
identifier name gets to choose the style that's used.  In a case
insensitive language, every programmer that uses it gets to use their
own.

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