Why make a language case sensitive?

[Anders Eggers-Krag]

> > It is a typical god side of an MS product, total integration with total
> > benfit, a pitty thought that the interface is less good than Borland's...
> 
> I can't say I have used anything of Borland since BC 4.5, I think.  I have
> seen cool features in some GUI builders and IDEs that aren't in VB6, so I
> have an idea of what you are talking about.  "Boa Constructor"
>  http://boa-constructor.sourceforge.net/ ), an IDE for Python seems to make
> a good effort to implement features typical of recent technologies, although
> it is still in "Pre-Alpha" but very promising.
ill take a look at it, although my guess is that I will stick with Ultra Edit until
I get around to making my own editor


> > Another solution is to be really smart and figure the flow of the
> > program and determine when a variable is first used and color that
> > color1 and the next time it is used it is colored color2...
> 
> I think this [figure the flow of the program] is what VC6 attemps to do with
> C/C++ code (and that's a pretty expensive calculation) and it's a pity the
> compiler will [most likely] just end up re-doing the work when you hit
> "Build", as opposed to something totally integrated like VB...
Agreed VB has an advantage there


> > > Where the variables are declared in the form of a comment that starts
> with
> > > the letters "var" which, I think, is how JavaScript declares variables,
> > > isn't it?
> > it is said the man who knew the language inside out :-)
> 
> I'm sorry, I don't follow...

I was just showing off :-)
saying yes var is the way you do it, when you do it in JavaScript/JScript,
and at the same time saying that I know JScript inside out


> > > So, by having a line at the beginning of a function (right after
> > > the description line, which I hope I didn't screw up) indicating the
> names
> > > of the variables we intend to use, any name that isn't in that list and
> > > isn't in anything we imported would be highlighted as a mistake, and if
> only
> > > the case differs, the editor would make the case match the
> declaration...
> > The only problem is that it turns Python ugly...
> 
> Does it?  Wouldn't it help whoever was reading your code to better
> understand where the scope of the variables are, and what you intend to do?
> I'm reminded of assembler, where it is good practice to comment which
> registers you will be "destroying" and which you will be using.  It saves
> someone from looking at each line of code to figure it out....
It may make it a bit easier to see such things, but in general you should
make everything clear through propper naming...
It puts some extra information in a not too beautiful way, a lot like C++ does
in the millions of hearder files etc. Python is intendet to be a language where you don't
have to know a lot of syntactical extras...


> > I know it is a problem, I will however try to enforce it in our
> > concern, and one might design a devoloping tool that enforced a
> > naming convention, that could be dfined by the user.
> 
> ...or a variable declaration convention defined by the user???  : )   You
> wouldn't HAVE to use the "# var", maybe you're like me and you come from a
> VB background and you'd rather use "# dim"?
well personally I am a C/C++/Java/JScript/Python person, and I don't mind so much
whether it be dim, var, whatever, but I mind having to feed my editor additional 
information...


> > Once you get used to it it really isn't much of a worry
> 
> I realized today my version of PythonWin (125) wasn't recommended as being
> the one to use for auto-completion and other nice features, so maybe it
> already does everything I want it to and my whole rant is moot??  I didn't
> think PythonWin was as nice as SciTe, in terms of syntax highlighting, so I
> switched, but now that I look at PythonWin 132, I'm impressed!  Maybe I *do*
> have everything I want.
yes the 125 wasn't much fun - I haven't looked at 132 yet, I have been busy developing
a major online consumer database in ASP/Jscript, I actually considdered using Python
but I couldn't figure out how to set the values Session and Application Objects...


> > there is only one thing in this world that makes me wonder: why are all
> > the beautiful languages run time parsed? (i here think primarily on
> > Python and Java)
> 
> Only ONE thing?  Wow.  You must know the answer to life, the universe and
> everything, then?  And the question, too?  If it were up to me, this
> language would have been called "42"...
aye one thing only - and of course I know the question, isn't that what we earthlings 
are here for? ;-)

ok there is one more neglegible thing that I wonder about wommen :-)


-- 
Anders Eggers - Krag