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

[Russell Wallace]

Andrew M. Kuchling wrote:
> 
> bwinton at tor.dhs.org (Blake Winton) writes:
> > Speaking as someone who had to use Modula-3, Ugh!
> > (Modula 3's largest mis-feature, for me at least, was that all keywords
> >  had to be typed in ALL-UPPERCASE.  My little finger got really sore
> >  after four months of programming.  :P)
> 
> I always liked that feature.  Since I usually programmed on a plain
> console (still do), there weren't many options for syntax
> highlighting.  Writing all the keywords in uppercase made program
> structure, as opposed to lowercase variable names, leap out at you.
> Syntax colouring without colour, in a way.

I remember hating that when doing Modula-2 in college.  To me, the
important things are my identifiers, the keywords are plumbing
(especially with a Pascal-family language that uses so damn many of the
things), so shouting the plumbing at me while hiding the important stuff
is the worst possible combination.

(I'd have kept Caps Lock on and at least got equal status for
everything, but that wasn't the style the lecturers used so they'd
probably have marked me down for it.)

Jack-Sprat-would-eat-no-fat-ly-y'rs,

-- 
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mailto:rwallace at esatclear.ie
http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace