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

[Phil Austin]

François Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> "Juergen A. Erhard" <jae at ilk.de> écrit:
> 
> > Actually, I couldn't even name a case-insensitive language offhand... and
> > I doubt they are really easier than case sensitive ones.
> 
> Some among the oldest FORTRANs, maybe.  COBOL, I don't know.  Scheme.  HTML.

Actually modern Fortran is still case-insensitive -- the existing code
base is simply too large to consider changing this.

As another data point, I teach Python to 3rd-year Earth science
students, and haven't noticed any particular problems related to case.
About half of these students have programmed previously in Matlab
(case sensitive) or C++, but the rest are new to programming.  (The
single biggest issue is mutable vs. immutable variables in functions.)

Phil