[r6rs-discuss] R5RS is not a baseline

[Grant Rettke]

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Thomas Lord <lord at emf.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 23:17 -0600, Grant Rettke wrote:
>> In popular case-sensitive languages today like Java and C#, the
>> majority of programmers make a point never to use case alone to
>> distinguish between variables due to the obvious errors that doing so
>> often introduce. Case-sensitivity is a burden to the programmer that
>> should be solved by the language.
>
> Why solve that by the language?  Why not solve
> in the IDE and program analysis tools, instead?

The philosophy of "where to help the programmer" seems to be what you
are discussing.

In the Java IDEs that I use; the IDE keeps track of documentation and
provides me with details about a class or a method. Another approach
would be to allow for documentation in the language itself and query
for it within a REPL. Both approaches meet the same end but put the
responsibility into two different places. Case-insensitivty seems to
be so nicely provided by the language; though it is largely irrelevant
as the Unicode discussion alone seems to justify the requirement for
case sensitivity.