From: trash...@david-steuber.com (David Steuber "The Interloper")
Subject: Re: Uppercasing symbols
Date: 1998/12/08
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp

Would it be completely heretical of me to be neutral on the case
issue?  I personally find lower case easier to read than all-caps.  On
the other hand, caps can be helpful in some languages.

In C++, I might have something like this:

class Foo;

Foo foo;

This is not a problem for me.

I also deal with things that are case insensitive like HTML.  Again, I
prefer to use lower case when typing the tags.  I guess I am just to
lazy to use the shift key constantly.

Because of C/C++ parsing rules, the - character can't be used as a
word separator.  It turns into a minus sign, a token in its own right.
It makes the use of upper case symbols between words possibly more
desirable than underscores (both require the shift key).  Since Lisp
is happy to allow the - in a symbol name, I find it makes a great word
separator.  I can go ahead and type in my lazy fashion.

Lisp is rather flexible as far as case goes.  You can set the reader
to do case folding or not.  It seems to me, you have a choice.  You
just risk compatibility with other programmers by violating
convention.

What really counts is expressiveness.  Lisp is so expressive that I am
still trying to wrap my brain around it.  The primary problem
(actually, a good feature) being the large vocabulary.  Sure, I like
the terseness of C.  But such a language is in constant danger of
being write only.  It is more useful to a programmer to be able to
read the code.  That task is performed more frequently.

--
David Steuber (ver 1.31.3a)
http://www.david-steuber.com
To reply by e-mail, replace trashcan with david.

May the source be with you...