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~ case insensitive language creativity |
There is a theory floating about (or a joke) that case insensitive languages allow one to be creative and experimental, as your choice of capitalizing or bicapitalizing or camelcasing becomes basically "up to you".
A case sensitive language forces you to pick one choice of capitalization and stay with it...
So here's how it goes: a case insensitive language programmer is in his experimental and creative stages....
Years later he finally chooses to use a more disciplined unflexible case sensitive language. It's time to pick and choose and stay with a specific syntax. No more flexible creative do whatever you want capitalizations or camel cases. If the library author chose a syntax you have to use it and that is that. With the insensitive language you could mend the capitalization to your liking as the compiler won't complain.
So you go from creative flexible forgiving (case insensitive) stage, to disciplined fixed stage. Your language may even enforce a syntax, using, say gofmt, or python's forced 4/8 space tab war.
Then a few years later, you decide, to play around again with a case insensitive language.... and, maybe ten years later you go back once again to fixed case sensitive language.
A case insensitive language can help you be creative to develop a style, or a few styles, to then cause you to pick one and even develop a fixed langauge that is a static snap shot of one of your creativity points...
At one time you were using thisStyleOfCode but another day you were using ThisStyle with the first letter T capitalized. Other days you_were_using_this and other days you were using thisstylewithnocamelcaseanywhere. But then you used gofmt and you became disciplined. You stopped creativity, but at least you were neat and tidy.
Which will you choose? Bounce back and forth... or fixate on one? How many years will you last locked into neatness, and how many years will you sin a bit and become a bit messy and creative?
There are advantages to both... being fixated on a certain syntax is certainly desirable as it is a sort of coding standard to follow, that hopefully others will follow. On the other hand (I think Marco Van De Voort mentioned this), your creativity is taken a way a bit with languages that enforce a specific syntax or indentation.
I guess I like both. I do get sick of all the creativity at times, but I also sometimes often desire creativity. I get sick of different coding styles mixed all over the place but sometimes I'm sad if a tool like gofmt robs my creativity a bit.
In no way does a case sensitive language completely rob you of all creativity, it just can take a teeny bit away. In no way does a tool like gofmt completely rob you of creativity, it just makes your code a little more consistent, than say, a compiler source base developed with multiple coding styles by multiple developers...
It's not a clear cut case.... both methods have advantages. And paradoxes.
A creative programmer once migrated to a case sensitive language with an enforced formatting tool. Then he migrated to a case insensitive language to experiment. Then he went back to the sensitive language once again. Rinse and repeat, or, maybe this creative programmer finally said "enough. I'm fixating at a point.". We don't know, it's still up in the air... The fixated point is still mobile and flexible.
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