From: Jim Freeze <jim@...>
Date: 2005-10-07T00:40:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Object Orientation

Well, I can think of a couple of reasons why people don't put a lot
of meaning on case.

1) People are sloppy
2) Written words are just a way to represent sound, and there
    is no case in sound.

But, a more precise language, like math, would distinguish
between X and x. Computers just happen to be highly
precision oriented. Not a very tolerant (ie sloppy) bunch, which,
ultimately, I think is a good thing, when you are trying
to describe processes.


On 10/6/05, Dave Howell <groups@grandfenwick.net> wrote:
>
> On Oct 5, 2005, at 8:56, Robert Klemme wrote:
>
> > Krekna Mektek wrote:
> >> By the way, why are methods not named following the lowercaseUppercase
> >> convention, as in Java?
> >> This way I can see more directly that something is a method, and not
> >> an instance variable.
> >>
> >> I'd like to do it that way, but am not sure if this is against some
> >> Ruby philosophy..
> >
> > No problem with that.  It's just, um, that you will die a slow and
> > painful
> > death if you use CamelCase.  Don't ask me how it works - it's Matz
> > Magic(TM) built right into your Ruby runtime.
>
> I've always found underscores hard to type and annoying to read, so
> I've never used them in any of my programming.
>
> All of my code looks like
>
>         def newMartini
>                 attr_reader :withOlive
>
>                 def initialize(dryness)
>
>                 end
>
>                 def shakenNotStirred
>                 end
>         end
>
> and so on. It's regrettable (and generally a poor design choice) that
> case is significant, so you can't capitalize the initial character of
> methods or variables, but other than that, name them as you like.
>
> ++ warning: rant below ++
>
> [Why a poor design choice? Because except for certain specific enclaves
> in computer programming (e.g. Unix, but not Mac, not Windows, not DEC
> VAX, not BASIC, not Pascal, not REXX, and not Modula-2, to draw from
> personal experience), case isn't "significant." Including, oh, the
> entire rest of the world's written literature. Nobody thinks that Dave
> and DAVE and dave are three different people, or that a Ph.D is
> different from a  PH.D. Recipes can have Tbsp or tbsp, and on and on
> and on. You'd have to look long and hard, or find a Unix programmer, in
> order to find somebody who thought WordPerfect was spelled differently
> than Wordperfect, and e. e. cummings gets filed after Carter but before
> Dostoyevsky, not somewhere after the Z's. Capitalization is used for
> readability and convenience, but explicit meaning, especially
> identification, does not allow itself to change through mere
> capitalization; a message in all caps states the same things as one in
> all lower case (notwithstanding the possible *implicit* messages of
> emphasis). An italic R, a lower-case R, a cursive R, a bold R, a
> capital R: they are all the same letter, and functionally
> interchangeable. Except in a tiny minority of cases. Like Unix. And
> Ruby.]
>
>
>


--
Jim Freeze