Language change and code breaks

[Greg Ewing]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> I think it was a 19th century fancy, to start with.  Extremely
> recent when compared to the amount of time mathematics
> has been written about.

It's still a lot longer than computers have been around.
And the fact that they *did* adopt it suggests they
found it useful in some way. Perhaps because it let
them express things more succinctly?

They seem to be satisified with the decision, too.
I've never heard a group of mathematicians debating
whether mathematics should go back to being
case-insensitive (if it ever really was to begin
with).

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg