What's in a name?

[Edward S. Vinyard]

On Wed, 24 May 2000, Huaiyu Zhu wrote:
>On Wed, 24 May 2000 14:57:10 -0500, Edward S. Vinyard wrote:
>>On Wed, 24 May 2000, Thomas Thiele wrote:
>>> 1. Remove a (potential) hurdle for new programmers.
>>Case-sensitivity by itself is probably not a hurdle.  Learning to
>>recognize the (possibly implicit) convention a specific library, module,
>>or programmer uses to convey semantic information using case might be more
>>difficult, especially for someone who is not familiar with a language or
>>common conventions.
>
>This is exactly why case-insensitivity is not a good proposal:
><snip>

I am not advocating case-insensitivity.  I am advocating a standard
(enforced) method for conveying this information visually, using
capitalization or some other method.

Fredrik Lundh suggested that Python could enforce capitalization rules, as
it does indentation.  This is a solution to the problem that I described,
while case sensitivity or insensitivity by themselves are not.

My intent was to stimulate discussion along these lines, rather than
rehash the case sensitivity vs. case insensitivity arguments that have
been presented in other threads on this newsgroup.  I apologize if this
was not clear from my original messages.

Ed