Re: Case for case-sensitivity (Was: Three simple questions)

[Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <D4BEB678D89A64A9.0BF2E74EC8861347.89ADE1DE3BC27E76@lp.airnews.net>, Frank Christiny <fchris@pdq.net> writes:
> John English wrote:
>> >
>> >    In the Company of my friend.       In the company of my friend.
>> >    Ada presentation today.            ADA presentation today.
>> >    Standing by the Bank.              Standing by the bank.
>> 
>> I fail to see your point -- these would all be resolved by context,
>> surely?
> 
>       The point was to emphasize that for a human parser, the
>    sentences are different.  Even without the context they are very
>    different.  (The river could hardly be expected to have a Bank,
>    unless it's the "Left Bank" of course).  The same is true in a
>    case-sensitive language.  You can do "lazy" stuff like that there,
>    such as I mentioned earlier; and, without regard for the context.
> 
>> > 2. Case sensitivity standardizes the coding practice of the
>> >    internals.  Some Ada samples of the different practices I have
>> >    been able to observe just two months into my introduction to the
>> >    language:
>> >
>> >    WITH Ada.Text_IO               with Ada.Text_IO
>> >    PROCEDURE Some_Procedure       procedure Some_Procedure
>> >    my_int : INTEGER;              My_Int : integer;
>> >    BEGIN                          begin
>> >       NULL:                          null;
>> >    END Some_Procedure;            end Some_Procedure;
>> >
>> >    With Ada.Text_IO
>> >    procedure Some_Procedure
>> >    my_int : INTEGER;
>> >    begin
>> >       NULL;
>> >    end Some_Procedure;
>> >
>> >       The first two versions are at least self-consistent.  The
>> >    galling part is that the code I have to actually maintain at work
>> >    is the of the latter flavor!  Maybe because it was the result of
>> >    many tinkerers prior to me.  So, what do I do in this case?
>> 
>> Run a prettyprinter over the code. That's what tools are for.
> 
>       Sure, but you missed the point again.  The language does look
>    confusing to a case-sensitive newcomer.  I guess the same happens
>    going the other way around.  In any case, thanks to all of you
>    guys' input I've begun to see the rationale behind
>    case-insensitivity and, most of all, I recognize it seems to work.
>    It shows to what extent Adaites would go to avert preventable
>    errors.  Now, all I need to do is get used to it...
> 
> -- 
> Frank Christiny                       fchris@pdq.net
> Sr. Software Engineer                 Lockheed Martin Space Operations
> Houston, Texas, USA                   http://freeweb.pdq.net/fchris/