Re: Three simple questions

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

In article <BF259CEB83D72A27.E3DDC61E336AB14F.68F3B83D3BAA6ABF@lp.airnews.net>, Frank Christiny <fchris@pdq.net> writes:

>> >2.  What is the rationale for case-insensitivity in the language?
>> 
>> At least one reason is for safety against misspelling.
> [snip]
> 
>       Whoa!  So you are saying the original designers of the language
>    actually sat down and decided the majority of us programmers were
>    dislexic or something?   I am sure there is more to it than that!

There is almost nothing in the Ada design related to "the majority" of
programmers.  The goal is more oriented toward "worst case" or "serving
all".  If _some_ programmer would have trouble maintaining the safety
aspects of code you have written, that would be bad for people riding
the particular airplane or railroad train you have programmed.

As it happens I have maintained code I wrote ten years earlier.
All the checking built into the language has been quite helpful
in reducing the number of new defects I added due to having been
away from the design for some time.

=======

By the way, your original question at the top of this page struck me
as quite odd.  While C/C++ uses case sensitivity, I always understood
that to be part of the Topsy-like development history of the Unix
operating system.  To me, it is case-sensitivity that should be
(but cannot be) rationalized, as there is never a good reason for
allowing TheItem and theItem to be separate variables.