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

[François Pinard]

Russell Wallace <rwallace at esatclear.ie> writes:

> > The most honest arguments are "case sensitivity feels cleaner" and that
> > it "is more popular with existing programmers."

> It seems to me that the important argument in this context is "case
> insensitivity will break millions of lines of existing code, and perhaps
> split the user base if a significant number of existing users refuse to
> switch".  I can see good arguments either way - overall it doesn't
> strike me as a major issue - but I'm dubious about changing it at this
> stage.

It seems many of us a a reason against it.  My main reason for praying
that Guido will stand by what he gave us so far, is that Python is a clean
language, and that case insensitiveness is an open door to sloppiness right
from the lowest level and initial contact with the language.  That will
corrupt everything from down up in the long run.  It's not really a thing
we should do to children, and not either a thing children should do to us.

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard