Re: Why not combine Ada and C++?

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

Similar cases have been given here before and been vigorously debated. I
personally would not program this way because of the easy misreading or
mistyping of "Car" vs "car" - and that's (one of the reasons) why Ada
doesn't do it that way. It is also just a naming convention that might not
get adhered to and might cause problems switching from one app to another or
one programmer's code to another. (Yes, I favor adherence to coding
conventions but they are difficult to enforce.) In a sense, it is
fundamentally no different than "Car" vs "Car_Type" or some similar
convention, so generally speaking, you can get the same effect with a
different style. (You'll find about as much religious fervor over the pro
_Type vs anti _Type adherents! :-)

As I said elsewhere, people are going to have preferences and there will be
good reasons on either side supporting what people prefer. Ada had to decide
to be either case sensitive or insensitive and either way it was going to
displease some segment of the population. It opted for insensitivity because
it was generally viewed to be the safer alternative - for a language heavily
concerned with avoiding errors. You give something up and you gain
something. At least it wasn't done for no reason at all and I think any
reasonable programmer can learn to work with it (and might discover that it
*does* avoid some collection of errors.)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Robert*@" <Robert_member@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:9qfg4v02t20@drn.newsguy.com...
>
> in some cases, case sensitivity can be very good.
>
> for example, in Java, the convention is to use lower case first letter for
> a name of a method. and Upper case first letter for a Class and interface
> name, lower case all letters for a package name.
>
> This is very usefull, becuase if you'r reading code, and you see an Upper
case
> first letter on an identifier, then you know without having to look aroud,
that
> the name represent a Class name. and the same for method names.
>
> This means you can write
>
>   Car car= new Car("buick");
>
> and it is clear as a bird which is the type and which is the variable.
> (In Ada, you have to add "_Type" to the type to try to distinguish
things).
>
> This is a convention, not enforced by the language, but it is so strong,
that
> any java programmer cought not doing it, will be immeadiatly taken out and
> shot in clear day light without a question being asked :)
>
> Myself, I prefer case sensitive. But it is not a very important feature,
there
> are more important things to look at first. But if I am designing a new
> lang, i'd make case sensitive.
>