Re: IDENTIFIERS in Upper Case

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Steve says

<<The coding convention we use is more elaborate than others I have heard
suggested but conveys more information at a glance.>>

Not to me it doesn't, it is completely unreadable. And that is because I
am used to a different style. But the trouble is that almost all Ada
programmers are also used to a different style.

I find odd-ball outliers like this in the style debate to be an active
nuisance to the goal of comfortable interchange of code. It's actually
surprising that the C community, undisciplined in so many respects,
and unwilling in so many respects to be consistent (consider the
bitter {} debate), is in fact willing to be highly conforming when
it comes to capitalization issues.

Whereas the Ada community, normally so disciplined in such matters (e.g.
nearly everyone more or less follows RM style for layout) has a small
but noisy minority pushing various peculiar capitalization styles.

Note that I am using peculiar here in its original meaning of different
or unique styles, not as meaning strange or wrong. Steve alledges that
the style they follow is more readable, but of course he has no data
for this allegation, so it remains just an anecdotal claim. What is
surely the case is that it clashes with accepted norms, making it
harder to integrate outside people and outside code. 

In the worst case, what happens is that you get people who absolutely
refuse to conform. I remember that one person at Alsys absolutely
insistned on using mixed case. As a result, no one else in the company
would touch his code. Automatic pretty printing does not resolve this
situation, because of the issue of configuration control (what version
is checked in, neither answer is adequate to both parties in practice,
especially since it is hard to generate mixed case automatically).

I think the reason that the situation is a mess in Ada is that the
original reference manual recommended the all upper case identifier
style, and right from the word start, the community fragmented into
the purists who insisted on following this recommendation (perhaps
including some who objectively felt it was better), and a large
group of people who could not stand all upper case.