Language change and code breaks

Joseph A. Knapka jknapka at earthlink.net
Thu Jul 26 13:31:40 EDT 2001


Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> "Joseph A. Knapka" <jknapka at earthlink.net> writes:
> 
> > FWIW, I am a relative newcomer to Python, with a lot of general
> > programming experience (C,C++,Java,Tcl,Prolog,LISP,Perl...). I
> > really love Python, but making it case-insensitive would put a
> > very significant damper on my enthusiasm. Why would you want
> > to intentionally reduce the symbol space available for names?
> 
> The number of symbols available is so much larger than the number of
> distinct names you need that the reduction is irrelevant.
> 
> > Everyone knows that in normal usage, case carries meaning (bob
> > vs Bob). How could it possibly benefit the beginner to violate
> > that naive expectation?
> 
> I know plenty of people who *sometime* write their name with a
> lowercase letter.  I even know someone who writes the personal pronoun
> "I" as "i", convinced that the form "I" would be pretentious.
> 
> You would be very surprised if email to JKnapka at EarthLink.Net was sent
> to a different user than email to jknapka at earthlink.net.  There are
> plenty of situations where one only has one case available, e.g. WHEN
> CAPITALIZING FOR EMPHASIS or when typing with one finger.  In American
> usage, the first letter of most words in section and chapter titles
> are capitalized without changing the semantics.
> 
> For beginning typists, hunt-and-peck style, the shift key is one
> complication they can do without, so beginners tools are often
> case-forgiving.
> 
> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> The hostility of the user community is frightening.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Oh my. I'm sorry if my very first post to c.l.py came off as hostile.
I'm more just perplexed, I don't understand how a move to case
insensitivity could be beneficial, and I guess that's my problem
(but I'm glad you've changed your mind :-). In any case, I am in
awe of what you have accomplished with Python. It is without doubt
the most usable general-purpose language I have come across.
Thank you.

-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
// http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
2nd Lbl A + 1 = 2nd Pause 2nd Prt GTO 2 R/S



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