in the text of a program in a particular language is better to use case sensitivity or not? how do you justify your choice? Solution At the start, everything was in uppercase (FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP, etc.). But it was hard to read, so they added case insensitivity to some systems (IBM mainframe), and case sensitivity to some other (Unix). Unix was case sensitive, and so many programming languages developed for use on Unix were case sensitive. Computers are not forgiving - an uppercase character is not the same thing as a lowercase character, they\'re entirely different. And back when processing cycles, RAM and so forth were expensive it wasn\'t seen as worth the effort to force compilers and computers to be \"forgiving\", people were just trying to get the things to work. Notice how case insensitivity didn\'t really become something useful until things like Visual Basic came along - once companies started to get invested in the concept that getting the masses to the program was a good thing for their bottom line did the languages start to be friendlier and more forgiving. Learning is always easier by example so here it goes: C#(case sensitive but usable from VB.NET which is case insensitive): Java and JS use a style similar to C# but methods/functions/events are declared like variables doSomething, onEvent. ObjectPascal(Delphi and Lazarus/FPC are case insensitive, like ADA and VB.NET) So it\'s really not important if a language is case sensitive or not. Newer concepts were added to case sensitive languages that were too confusing to be expressed by case alone and required using a prefix. Since case sensitive languages started using prefixes, it\'s only reasonable to stop using case with the same identifier name someIdentifier SomeIdentifier SOME_IDENTIFIER, ISomeIdentifier and just use prefixes where it makes sense. Consider this problem: You have a class member called something, a method/function parameter called something and a local variable called something, what case convention could be used to easily differentiate between these ? Isn\'t it easier to just use the most ConsistentCaseStyle everywhere and add a prefix ? Fans of case insensitive languages care about code quality, they just want one style. Sometimes they accept the fact that one library is poorly written and use a strict style while the library might have no style or poor code. Both case sensitive and insensitive languages require strict discipline, it makes more sense to have only one style everywhere. It would be better if we had a language that used only StrictCase, one style everywhere and prefixes..

1. in the text of a program in a particular language is better to use case sensitivity or not? how do
you justify your choice?
Solution
At the start, everything was in uppercase (FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP, etc.). But it was hard to
read, so they added case insensitivity to some systems (IBM mainframe), and case sensitivity to
some other (Unix).
Unix was case sensitive, and so many programming languages developed for use on Unix were
case sensitive.
Computers are not forgiving - an uppercase character is not the same thing as a lowercase
character, they're entirely different. And back when processing cycles, RAM and so forth were
expensive it wasn't seen as worth the effort to force compilers and computers to be "forgiving",
people were just trying to get the things to work.
Notice how case insensitivity didn't really become something useful until things like Visual
Basic came along - once companies started to get invested in the concept that getting the masses
to the program was a good thing for their bottom line did the languages start to be friendlier and
more forgiving.
Learning is always easier by example so here it goes:
C#(case sensitive but usable from VB.NET which is case insensitive):
Java and JS use a style similar to C# but methods/functions/events are declared like variables
doSomething, onEvent.
ObjectPascal(Delphi and Lazarus/FPC are case insensitive, like ADA and VB.NET)
So it's really not important if a language is case sensitive or not. Newer concepts were added to
case sensitive languages that were too confusing to be expressed by case alone and required
using a prefix.
Since case sensitive languages started using prefixes, it's only reasonable to stop using case with
the same identifier name someIdentifier SomeIdentifier SOME_IDENTIFIER, ISomeIdentifier
and just use prefixes where it makes sense.
Consider this problem: You have a class member called something, a method/function parameter
called something and a local variable called something, what case convention could be used to
easily differentiate between these ? Isn't it easier to just use the most ConsistentCaseStyle
everywhere and add a prefix ?
Fans of case insensitive languages care about code quality, they just want one style. Sometimes
they accept the fact that one library is poorly written and use a strict style while the library might

2. have no style or poor code.
Both case sensitive and insensitive languages require strict discipline, it makes more sense to
have only one style everywhere. It would be better if we had a language that used only
StrictCase, one style everywhere and prefixes.