Case-sensitivity: why -- or why not? (was Re: Damnation!)

[Phil Fraering]

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> I am a very case-sensitive person myself: it bothers me when people
> don't start their sentences with capital letters or when they refer to
> themselves as "i" in lowercase -- or when people refer to Python as
> "python" or "PYTHON".  (Come to think of it, it bothered me when you
> wrote "german" instead of "German" :-).

Personally, I simply think that lowercase is more readable than uppercase,
but I don't really know the reason why. 

> Yet, here are some of the reasons why I am considering making Python
> case-insensitive:
> 
> (1) Randy Pausch, a professor at CMU, found, when teaching Python to
> non-CS students in the context of Alice (www.alice.org), that the
> number one problem his students were having was to remember that case
> matters in Python.  (The number two problem was 1/2 == 0; there was no
> significalt number three problem.)

I suspect there may be a "birth language" problem here: I don't
know about Dutch, but German uses "case" to impart information
much more than English, where its usage is more limited.

> (2) I've met many people who are experienced and accomplished Python
> programmers but who still, when referring to Python modules or
> functions in an informal context (e.g. email), make up their own case
> conventions.  E.g. people will write me about the String module or
> about FTPLib.
> 
> I also know some of the things I plan to do to make the transition
> painless and to make the usual problems with case insensitivity more
> palatable.  E.g. I may add a case insensitivity feature to IDLE which
> makes sure that all identifiers are written in a consistent case, I
> may add flags to pre-Py3k Python interpreters to turn on case
> insensitivity or case sensitivity or a special warning mode.

Ah.

-- 
Phil Fraering         "One day, Pinky, A MOUSE shall rule, and it is the
pgf at globalreach.net    humans who will be forced to endure these humiliating
/Will work for tape/   diversions!"
                      "You mean like Orlando, Brain?"