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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,768ec7d79291ed2c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: IDENTIFIERS in Upper Case Date: 1997/03/28 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 229120610 References: <1997Mar26.185431.12742@nosc.mil> <5hfd5b$4ro$1@news.pacifier.com> Organization: New York University Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-03-28T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Steve says <> 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.