From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 101deb,4e762e97c7cd6ea4,start X-Google-Attributes: gid101deb,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,d95b511473b3a931 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: rav@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (++ robin) Subject: Re: Language Choice and Coding style Date: 1996/07/08 Message-ID: <4rom3i$fv6@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 164167604 references: <4r3c89$com@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> <4r7pvr$sh6@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU> organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.pl1 nntp-posting-user: rav Date: 1996-07-08T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >smize@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Samuel Mize) writes: >>My best understanding: In The Beginning, all we had was punched cards >>and simple teletype interfaces, so everything was all capitals. That's >>all there were. Also, compiler table-space was tight, so 6-character >>or 8-character identifier limits were common. >How soon they forget. >(a) COBOL has always allowed hyphens in identifiers, e.g. > COMPUTE-WEEKLY-PAYROLL > It's one of the oldest surviving programming languages. >(b) PL/I had two encodings (the "48-character set" and the "6-character --- ? ---That's the 60-character set. > set"). The 60-character coding had the underscore. Where I used it, > it was considered good PL/I style to use the underscore. The ANSI > PL/I standard is 1976, but the language is older than that. ---Yes, that's about 1966 when it first came out. >(c) The third oldest computer I have ever seen in operation (the other > two were an IBM 650 and an IBM 1620) was an IBM 1130. It had an > APL keyboard. APL uses underlines. >(e) Algol 60 and Algol 68 both allowed identifiers of any length, and > both handled multi-word identifiers by allowing embedded spaces. > E.g. > 'FOR' EMPLOYEE NUMBER := 1 'STEP' 1 'UNTIL' LAST EMPLOYEE 'DO' > WEEKLY PAYROLL[EMPLOYEE NUMBER] := 0; >>Once lower case and longer identifiers became available, some people >>started writing longer identifiers, while others stayed with the older >>trs style. This is where IdentifiersLikeThis came from. >>I think this was first common in Pascal. I don't think Pascal had >>underscores in identifiers, I may be wrong. >The old Pascal standard didn't (because the CDC character set lacked 'em). >UCSD Pascal allowed underscores but ignored them. >The new Pascal standard (10206) allows them. >Smalltalk didn't use underscores, because it was developed before the 1967 >version of ASCII; the 1963 version of ASCII had a left arrow where the >underscore is now. >>Underscores also take a little more effort to type >That depends entirely on which keybaord you are using. >On the IBM 029 keypunches that I wrote Fortran, Burroughs Algol, >and PL/I in, it was very easy to type underscores. >>especially if >>you're not a good touch typist. So, the MixedCase identifier is >>still common in some quarters. >This is ludicrous. It is _harder_ to type > FooBarUgh >(because it requires *three* case shifts) than > foo_bar_ugh >(because it requires only *two* case shifts). And in an age of mutable >keymaps it is even sillier.