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=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,66bc6b039f1e005d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2000-10-10 17:20:12 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!newsfeed.mathworks.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail From: wv12@my-deja.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Three simple questions Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 00:11:24 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Message-ID: <8s0b78$2no$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <2BED68CA963D6D55.A78776F656DA0452.75A61ED22116F1B6@lp.airnews.net> <39e2588f.21565740@news.demon.co.uk> <39E2D51E.D0122F20@bton.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: 199.173.188.207 X-Article-Creation-Date: Wed Oct 11 00:11:24 2000 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 95; DigExt) X-Http-Proxy: 1.1 x59.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 199.173.188.207 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDwv12 Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:1138 Date: 2000-10-11T00:11:24+00:00 List-Id: In article <39E2D51E.D0122F20@bton.ac.uk>, > I'm dead against case sensitivity. For example, in Java you not only > have to remember a zillion API calls to do anything useful, you also > have to remember how they're capitalised. The Java rule is that class > names have EachWordCapitalised (or is that EachWordCapitalized? :-), > which is fine when you can remember whether "run time" is one word > or two (is it RuntimeException or RunTimeException?). Case sensitivity enforces consistency among code produced by different programmmers. Imagine programmer A insists on writing runTimeeXception and programmer B insits writing runtimeexcception. Maybe you yourself on Monday decides to write runtimeException and on Tuesday, RUNTIMEEXCEPTION. Now, that is sick. Well, if you can do anything *useFUl* in Ada, you don't have to write it in Java. > > And of course, none of the compilers I've used will help tell you > what's wrong if you misspell something. You'd think they could add > error reporting for undeclared identifiers which would say "there's > no such thing as RunTimeException, but when I did a case-insensitive > check I found RuntimeException -- is that what you mean?". Of course, > the level of helpfulness that GNAT provides in error messages would > take all the fun out of programming in Java... ;-) > > It gets even more fun with OOP; you think you've got a method called > DoThisNow and override it, but it's actually called doThisNow; the > result is two methods, one called doThisNow and the other called > DoThisNow, which are of course completely unrelated... and the > compiler will say nothing. > > Since humans consider 'D' and 'd' to be variant representations of > the same letter, why shouldn't programming languages? > Human only invents ASCII where 'd' and 'D' has different values. > (This doesn't apply to language names like Ada/ADA, of course... but > I don't want to reopen that particular theological debate here... ;-) > The way I see it, case insensitive languages just show they are aging. > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.