>
> Sure, you need some basic English level. But the more you pile on,
> the higher the hurdle. Are you advocating for making things more
> difficult intentionally?
No, just consistent.
And at any rate, the argument about case sensitivity has two parts:
- Why do I prefer or not case insensitivity? That doesn't matter much.
- The great inconvenience and lack of respect for existing users
which the change causes/caused. Even though I much prefer case
insensitivity, I would not argue for C to change. It would be
too disruptive.
Why are Scheme users afforded any less consideration?
>>> Right. And when they learn how to be programmers, there's a bunch
>>> of much harder stuff that they need to learn in addition.
>>
>> Sure, and the more you pile on, the higher the hurdle. Are you
>> advocating for making things more difficult intentionally?
>
> No, I'm advocating removing a hurdle.
If they are already learning English, the hurdle is there, in English.
Scheme is just being consistent with it.
>>>> Some of us believe that in this day and age, being ignorant of
>>>> programming, at least at some level, is akin to being ignorant of
>>>> mathematics (again at some level) or science.
>>>
>>> Did I say in any way that I'm against making the masses know how
>>> to program? It's *you* who holds the opinion that a
>>> case-insensitive language is somehow easier to learn.
>>
>> Yes, because it is most like the largely case-insensitive natural
>> language from which it grew, and which most people in the world are
>> learning as well.
>
> So now we're back to "most people in the world better know English or
> else".
When it comes to programming languages, yes. Until Chinese-based
or Hindi-based programming languages take off, that is a matter of fact,
whether we like it or not. French Fortran is a curiosity, but, to my
knowledge
it has largely been abandoned.
>>>> Thus making changes to a primarily teaching language that are
>>>> extraneous to novice users (as opposed to experts from other
>>>> programming languages) seem misguided at least.
>>>
>>> If we're already down to anecdotes, I can provide two:
>>>
>>> * As a kid if a non-English-speaking country, I have seen several
>>> examples of students that were confused by case-insensitivity.
>>
>> Were they learning English as well?
>
> Yes, but they didn't use it frequently enough to internalize it.
So? The hurdle was still there.
>>> * When the HtDP authors wrote a series of languages aimed at
>>> teaching students, they intentionally made these languages
>>> case-sensitive. (This was well before their host language
>>> changed its default mode to being sensitive.)
>>
>> Sure. People can be confused.
>
> With all due respect (as corny as that sounds), I think they spent a
> little more time than you did on the question of designing these
> languages. (And that's for a very large value of "little".)
They spent infinitely more time designing _these_ languages than I did,
as I spent 0 time doing it, and I imagine that they spent >0 time
doing it.
That doesn't mean that they were not confused.
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