Re: Breaking backwards compatibility - good or bad?

Jerry Stuckle wrote:
>> So your logic is "this is how we do it now, therefore it must be better"?
>> Perhaps it's not progress - perhaps it's nothing more than fashion.
>>
>> Nobody's given a convincing reason why case sensitivity is better.
>> (The nearest to it is the stuff about the cost of doing the
>> comparisons. That might have been an issue when Unix and C started up,
>> but it's not very convincing today.).
>>
>>
>> You may well be right that it will become increasingly difficult to
>> find systems that aren't case insensitive. But I've yet to hear a
>> reason why this is to be welcomed, while I do know a couple of reasons
>> not to welcome it.
>>
>> Colin
>>
>
> Neither I nor anyone else needs to "give a convincing reason...". The
> bottom line is - that's the way things are, and it is supported by a
> vast majority of programmers.
>
How's that again?

So "because most people like it that way" is a valid philosophical argument?

I'm not expecting, or suggesting, that case sensitivity is going to
disappear. But that has no bearing at all on whether or not it is a
thoroughly bad idea.

> However, there have been other reasons mentioned in this topic. But I
> suspect none of them are "good enough" for you.
>
Really? The only reasons I can find in the trail (apart from the appeal
to the majority*, and the scurrilous insinuation that case insensitive
is somehow of the past and therefore worthless) are a barely relevant
point from physics and a specific operational issue in PHP (which is in
any case dependent on case sensitivity in the OS).

* Did the majority ever vote on the topic? And don't say they did so by
choosing C/Java/Perl: any of these could have been made case insensitive
and there would have been essentially no difference; but they weren't
offered.

> And I haven't heard any good reasons why NOT to welcome it. Just saying
> $Foo and $fOO shouldn't point to different variables doesn't make it. To
> me they ARE different variables (although I wouldn't do this myself).
>
The argument is that to people (you remember people? the things that
write programs) 'project', 'Project' and 'PROJECT' *are* the same thing,
and we all have to learn that we must always make a new distinction
(which you have yet to demonstrate is useful) when we program.

Colin
Received on Tue Jan 3 03:51:07 2006