Posted by Richard Levasseur on 07/31/06 14:15

Tony Marston wrote:
> "Richard Levasseur" <richardlev@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1154281887.489543.70710@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Tony Marston wrote:
> >>
> >> Annoying is right. The problems that this could potentially cause
> >> seriously
> >> outweighs any benefits (what benefits?)
> >>
> >> --
> >> Tony Marston
> >> http://www.tonymarston.net
> >> http://www.radicore.org
> >
> > Benefits such as a standard meta-syntax,
>
> What is meta-syntax, what benefits do standards bring, and who set those
> standards?
>

"What benefits do standards bring"...? I'm sorry, but is this a
serious question? In addition to being anti-case-sensitive, are you
also anti-standards?

> > so we don't have to rely on intelli-sense,
>
> What's wrong with intellisense? If it is built into an IDE which detects
> what you have keyed in and automatically adjusts the case to match the
> previous declaration then surely by not using it you are exposing youself to
> the problems brought about by using a case-sensitive system. Surely this
> simply demonstrates that case-sensitivity is a problem and not a solution.
>

I didn't say there was anything wrong with it. With untyped languages,
though, intellisense loses some of its value. Not every IDE has
intellisense, either, and quality varies between them.

> > constantly refer back to the declaration and documentation,
>
> If the system is not case-sensitive then he possibility of having multiple
> declarations of the same thing in different case would not be a problem.
>
> > or some smart ass who LiKEs To ALTerN4t3 c4ps and
> > condense everything into as few lines as possible.
>
> Any moron who deliberately uses mixed case to cause confusion deserves
> nothing more than a poke in the eye with a pointed stick. But if the
> language was not sensitive to case then it would not be a problem in the
> first place, now would it?
>

Yes, it would still be a problem. That same moron can still do a
plethora of other things to make the code harder to read and
understand. If they're going to write obscufucated code, then whether
or not the language is case sensitive or not is irrelevent. In fact, I
would say it works to their advantage because now they can write it
differently everytime. Is it really that hard to distinguish
hiTh3RetWoU from hiTh3reTwoU? Not particularly, but its extra work I
shouldn't have to worry about and can be easily eliminated.

> > After all, we should strive for code that is as self-documenting as
> > possible.
>
> What has case-sensitivity got to do with self-documenting code? I have been
> writing self-documenting code for 25+ years using case-insensitive languages
> without any problems.
>

Because, as one of the benefits of case-insensitivity, you say that
thisTHING and thisThing are the same, so one doesn't need to worry
about how one writes it, implying and supporting that one *should*
alternate how it is written, which is not conductive towards readable
and self documenting code.

> --
> Tony Marston
> http://www.tonymarston.net
> http://www.radicore.org

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