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[Paul Squires]

What are your thoughts on programming languages whose syntax styles are case sensitive.  (BASIC languages are case insensitive)

Like them? Despise them? Why? Why not?

[Bumblebee]

I didn't like Python because of it. What is the advantage of case sensitivity?

[James Fuller]

Paul,
  I am a Basic guy from way back (Atari), and as far as I remember it has always? (mostly) been insensitive. I use Camel and do not code with CAPS for reserved words. All editors I use have syntax highlighting so it's easy to tell reserved words. Also helps to get the spelling correct.

James


 

[James Klutho]

I'm currently dedicating time to Python and the case sensitivity is an issue due to variables not needing to be declared with its dynamic typing of variables.  Larger programs can result in harder to track bugs.  In C/C++ and others, the compilers catches the misspellings and it's no big deal.  In general, case sensitivity is not a deal killer with me.  In fact, it keeps me on my toes with forced discipline.

[Paul Squires]

In fact, it keeps me on my toes with forced discipline.

You put into words what I was thinking and trying to formulate words for. Learning C++ has certainly taught me to be more careful with variable and function names. It does make it easier to work with winapi being able to use hwnd HWND, hbrush HBRUSH, etc and knowing that they are are separate variables. Visual Studio certainly helps with its built in linter catching all the misspellings. I think I'd need many more months to truly determine if I'd have a case sensitive / insensitive preference.

[José Roca]

You will have to abandon your VB mixed case style

[Paul Squires]

LoL yeah no more VB case hahaha

[José Roca]

In fact, case sensitivity is useless with languages like Basic, where you can can do DIM hwnd AS HWND (or as hwnd, as case does not matter) because something that follows "AS" can't be a variable name and must be a data type. Of course, if you use a syntax like HWND hwnd then you need case sensitivity as a way to differentiate the data type from the variable name. I prefer case insensitivity.

[philbar]

Visual Basic, the last time I used it, had a feature that saved me a few seconds of typing per page. The first time you used a name, it made a note of how you cased it. Afterward, every time you used that variable, the editor would silently correct it to match the way it was defined. That way, I could define constants in upper case, long variables camel cased, etc., and still use my lazy typing style to enter them in the program.

[SeaVipe]

That Visual Basic feature was handy, Phil. The only problem I recall with it was that the original declaration casing could not always be altered. If for some reason you were to change the casing sometimes the VB IDE would undo that change and return the variable to its original casing.

[Bumblebee]

I prefer to keep variable names short, like we do in mathematics.
The Visual Basic feature is useful for me when it comes to sub/function names.

[raymw]

When i started with Fortran, it was all caps, limit of 4 chars for variable names, and if it was an integer it started with I,J,K,K,M,N and max of 80 chars on a line. I think that I'd prefer all lower case, save using shift key, but caps for language components, procedures, etc. (the editor correcting it, similar to Visual studio/c#)