3 ms·

Technical hurdles aside, I just can't agree that case-sensitivity makes sense. To most people, an "a" and an "A" are not different symbols; they're the same let

Technical hurdles aside, I just can't agree that case-sensitivity makes sense. To most people, an "a" and an "A" are not different symbols; they're the same letter with "uppercase" formatting applied, much like bold or italics. And although one could argue that you could make a case-insensitive GUI layer while keeping the implementation case-sensitive, I feel that the terminal can be just as important from a UX perspective as anything else in the OS. After all, it's one of the main places power users create and access files. Given how much Siracusa and Torvalds (to an extent) advocate for better user experience over ease of technical implementation, I feel I'm missing something. Our job as programmers is to encompass the complexity of the real world in our programs, not to make our users think like machines.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> To most people, an "a" and an "A" are not different symbols; they're the same letter with "uppercase" formatting applied, much like bold or italics. So, what you are saying, is that there is no semantic difference between "1 mm" and "1 Mm"? Or between "my next computer" and "my NeXT computer"? Or between "acorn" and "ACORN"?
ominous 12y ago
tO MOST PEOPLE?
forgottenpass 12y ago
not to make our users think like machines. If differentiating between "file" and "File" is thinking like a machine, how isn't differentiating between "my files" and "myfiles" thinking like a machine? Should "my files" and "myfiles" be collapsed to mean the same thing? What about "files"?
- ominous 12y ago
  or "tus ficheros"
- archagon 12y ago
  An "f" is not a different character from an "F". To most people, it's the same letter with special formatting applied. They don't see it and think, "Oh, that's ASCII character 102." An F is an f, no matter how you type it. On the other hand, "myfiles" and "my files" have different numbers of characters. They sound different in your head, and you can easily point to the difference. It's the same as typing "alien" versus "a lien".
  - userbinator 12y ago
    A Ford is a very different thing from a ford. You can drive the former through the latter. If "most people" cannot tell the difference, then I believe that would be a failing of the education system.
- msbarnett 12y ago
  > If differentiating between "file" and "File" is thinking like a machine, how isn't differentiating between "my files" and "myfiles" thinking like a machine? Spaces are lexically significant in the English language because they indicate the breaks between words. "My files" are two English words that convey meaning to English speakers; "myfiles" is not a word at all and is meaningful only if we charitably insert the spacing necessary to make them meaningful. Capitalization does not impact meaning to English speakers in the same manner; "my files" and "My files" are understood to mean the same thing. Capitalization is in this case merely an artifact of sentence positioning and the like. It's orthographic convention and nothing more. Thus, to make the user have to understand that what is a meaningless distinction in English is a meaningful distinction to the user is, by definition, forcing the user to think like a machine.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> To most people, an "a" and an "A" are not different symbols; they're the same letter with "uppercase" formatting applied, much like bold or italics. So, what you are saying, is that there is no semantic difference between "1 mm" and "1 Mm"? Or between "my next computer" and "my NeXT computer"? Or between "acorn" and "ACORN"?

ominous 12y ago

tO MOST PEOPLE?

forgottenpass 12y ago

not to make our users think like machines. If differentiating between "file" and "File" is thinking like a machine, how isn't differentiating between "my files" and "myfiles" thinking like a machine? Should "my files" and "myfiles" be collapsed to mean the same thing? What about "files"?

ominous 12y ago
or "tus ficheros"
archagon 12y ago
An "f" is not a different character from an "F". To most people, it's the same letter with special formatting applied. They don't see it and think, "Oh, that's ASCII character 102." An F is an f, no matter how you type it. On the other hand, "myfiles" and "my files" have different numbers of characters. They sound different in your head, and you can easily point to the difference. It's the same as typing "alien" versus "a lien".
- userbinator 12y ago
  A Ford is a very different thing from a ford. You can drive the former through the latter. If "most people" cannot tell the difference, then I believe that would be a failing of the education system.
msbarnett 12y ago
> If differentiating between "file" and "File" is thinking like a machine, how isn't differentiating between "my files" and "myfiles" thinking like a machine? Spaces are lexically significant in the English language because they indicate the breaks between words. "My files" are two English words that convey meaning to English speakers; "myfiles" is not a word at all and is meaningful only if we charitably insert the spacing necessary to make them meaningful. Capitalization does not impact meaning to English speakers in the same manner; "my files" and "My files" are understood to mean the same thing. Capitalization is in this case merely an artifact of sentence positioning and the like. It's orthographic convention and nothing more. Thus, to make the user have to understand that what is a meaningless distinction in English is a meaningful distinction to the user is, by definition, forcing the user to think like a machine.