Explanation of "Case-sensitive"

[Jeff Erickson]

> I have yet to here a good argument for cases being distinct, and have
> seen several that say it's a bad idea.  So, once again:
> 
> Why is C case sensitive?  And who can we blame for this mistake?

In my opinion, one of the easiest ways to make Pascal code unreadable is to
capitalize all the keywords.  I find the line "IF foo = 3 THEN BEGIN" much more
distracting than the equivalent "if (foo = 3) then begin".

This is one of the best arguments (IMHO) for requiring that C keywords be
entered in lower case.  I don't want to be distracted by semantic sugar
when I'm trying to figure out what a piece of code does.  (Oh, god, I see
a flame war coming.  Please, no!!)

I tend to try to conform to a standard capitalization scheme when I enter
identifiers.  (e.g., CONSTANT, TypeName, variable, function()).  I don't want
any confusion about what something is.  If I see all upper case, it means
constant.  If I try to type the same identifier in lower case, I want the 
compiler to flag that as an error.  

I prefer my languages (and operating systems) to be completely case-sensitive.
"A" is not the same as "a" to me when I'm on the computer.

Your mileage may vary, and will be lower in California.  To each their own.


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Jeff Erickson       Claris Corporation  | Birdie, birdie, in the sky,
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