[Oberon] CapsLock

[Bob Walkden]

On 17 Jan 2016, at 21:50, Lars O <noreply at z505.com> wrote:
> 
> [...]
> CAPS LOCKS reserved words is just reinventing something called Syntax
> Highlighting... [...] 

> It's a debate between making the
> language easy to use and type for the programmer, v.s. saving a little bit
> of CPU cycles and wasted heat (entropy) out into the universe. [...]

No it isn't. Advice given by human factors professionals is to use colour as a secondary cue only, not as a primary cue. Syntax colouring uses colour as a primary cue.

Some 10% of the male population, including me, is colourblind. I find it very difficult to deal with distinctions that are based only on colour, particularly when faced with a jumble of usually badly-chosen colours as so often used by people who thoughtlessly or in ignorance use colour as a primary cue.

I find capitals used for keywords very much easier to read than coloured keywords (and other elements of the language which people decide to colour).

An editor can just as easily capitalise keywords as it can colour them, so your argument about entropy doesn't hold water. What's more it applies only to the writing of code, not to the reading.

Code is read more often than it is written, so it makes sense to put effort into readability, and capitals are more readable for more people than coloured syntax.

Oh, and using capitals it isn't 'reinventing', since it pre-dates syntax colouring.

B