Re: Capitalization Entropy (was: Looking for good Ada95 book)

[bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)]

In article <56dodr$alf@client3.news.psi.net>,
Scott James <james@sandy.mcci-arl-va.com> wrote:
>Incidentally, is it my imagination or was there a dissenting
>capitalization opinion in the Ada83 style guide?  I seem to
>have misplaced mine and now only have Ada95 style guides.

RM83 recommended lower-case reserved words, and ALL_CAPS_IDENTIFIERS.
RM95 recommends lower-case reserved words, and Mixed_Case_Identifiers.
Both use bold-face for reserved words, but both recognize that lots of
folks don't have such fancy editors, as can do bold face.

Colonel William Whittaker (now retired) strongly objected to the "new"
capitalization style in RM95.  So the change was not agreed upon
unanimously.  But pretty close -- I don't remember *anybody*
recommending all lower-case identifiers, and I don't remember anybody
other than Col Whittaker recommending sticking with the Ada 83 ALL_CAPS
style.  I do remember some people insisting on freedom -- i.e. that the
RM recommendation should be (merely) a recommendation, so they could do
what they like.

I also know that Smalltalk programmers don't fight these silly battles.
Class names *must* start with a capital letter, and method names *must*
be lower case, and compilers enforce these things, and nobody complains.
In Smalltalk, it's not a "style" issue.

If project-wide conventions are good, surely language-wide conventions
are better?  (I mean, when we're talking about LITTLE things, like
case-conventions, where it's got nothing to do with application areas,
and everything to do with personal preference, and what people are used
to.)

The nice (;-)) thing about this issue is that everybody can understand
it, and so everybody has an opinion.  If you ask people about whether
unconstrained-generic-formal-discriminated-task-aggregates ought to be
fungified, then you'll get less contention.

- Bob