
I turned caps lock on for a week - cpeterso
http://fusion.net/story/42057/caps-lock/
======
elihu
Fun fact: about ten years ago I was working on a research project that
involved implementing a high-precision timer mechanism in the Linux kernel.
Timer latency is caused mostly by either a) the long 10ms delay between timer
interrupts and b) non-preemptible code paths in the linux kernel (having user-
space code preempt the kernel was a new thing then).

When we fixed the timer latency problem, it made the non-preemptible code
paths more obvious. A lot of those were well-known and there was work at the
time to fix them, but one that I stumbled across by accident that I thought
was pretty interesting is that when you hit the caps lock key on a PS2
keyboard, the kernel would lock up for seven milliseconds as it negotiated
with the keyboard to turn the caps lock light on. (You could also trigger this
path without touching the caps lock key by using the "setleds" command.)

~~~
lbotos
I don't know if it's the same thing, but a Hardware teacher in HS used to tell
us that was the best way to diagnose a hung windows machine. If capslock
didn't light up, then it needed to be rebooted.

~~~
cmdrfred
This is my test to see if the monitor has malfunctioned or if the machine
refuses to wake up from sleep.

------
literalusername
_Lenovo ditched it on the Thinkpad[0]._

I read this and thought, "At long last, Lenovo has realized that they've
destroyed ThinkPad keyboards in recent years, and now they're celebrating the
ThinkPad's return to its stature as the world's greatest programmer's laptop
by restoring the Ctrl key to its traditional position!"

No. No, no, no, that would not be what they have done.

[0] [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/thinkp...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/thinkpad-x1-carbon-keyboard.jpg) o_0

~~~
blahedo
WAT

Ok, seriously. How is putting Home and End there helping _anyone_? (Also, it
just makes it that much harder for me to remap the key to Control, because now
I have to remap two keys. Argh.)

~~~
RankingMember
For a keyboard that's not full size, I actually kind of like that placement.
Shooting your cursor to the beginning or end of a line becomes something you
can do one-handed.

------
informatimago
Personnaly, I'm madder at people using only lower case (in usual written Human
languages, I don't mind it in C (but yes in C strings containing Human
language)).

Perhaps that's because I started computing with terminals and teletypes that
only had upper case characters, and even made an incursion with punch cards
and line printers having too only upper case characters. :-)

It's funny that this item of netiquete, where once mixed case was possible, it
was considered that upper case was "shouting" spread so well, while other
parts, that I would consider much more important, like avoiding top-posting
hasn't. :-(

~~~
nvader
Why is top-posting still something to avoid?

It took me a while to get used to it, but at this point I consider the war to
be won in favour of top-posting, due to Gmail embracing it.

~~~
stonogo
Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.

> Why is top-posting still something to avoid?

Gmail "embraced" it because their editor started out as a textarea and they
had no choice. It's a consequence of their programming environment and not
some kind of aesthetic choice they carefully considered.

~~~
nvader
With respect to emails, where the history of the correspondence is well-known
to all participants, isn't it actually more convenient to have the new
material up first? The chain of previous letters becomes an appendix that can
be referred to if needed, but does not sit in the way of the immediate
communication. I think in some ways this mimics how snail-mail correspondence
works too: you always attach the new message on top, and context can go
afterwards, or be referred to by correspondents.

Although, the real shame is that this is a problem at all, given how easy it
would be for clients to detect diffs and provide the comment in the way the
user wants it.

------
paulsutter
There actually is a practical application for the caps lock key: I use it to
switch between English and Japanese keyboards. The light is a great indicator
of the mode you're in.

~~~
takemikazuchi
Wow, as someone that switches between two language inputs(coincidentally
English/Japanese actually) a lot on a variety of OS's, and never uses caps
lock, I think this is a great key-binding.

~~~
jimmaswell
It's just alt-shift if you set it up through Windows' keyboard options.

------
mhd
These days, all caps makes me go look for SQL keywords in the text...

Capitalization in general is a bit weird, being a bit of an afterthought in
western writing. And applied a bit haphazardly. I mean, as a German, I'm used
to Capitalizing A Lot More Frequently, on the other hand, I still think
writing _I_ is a bit presumptuous.

As for programming languages, it's not just about capital when people get into
arguments between CamelCase and snake_case, there's also spacing. Although
Ada_Case seems to be pretty rare…

Was it Modula-3 that had KEYWORDS writ large?

~~~
eropple
It wasn't _required_ , but I habitually capitalized keywords in QBasic. Did
not enjoy when Visual Basic tried to correct me about that.

These days I still do it for SQL, though!

------
smoyer
Well ... I hate to advertise our technical debt but we've got a couple of
mainframes that store every character string in upper case because no one has
bothered to convert from the original EBCDIC [1] ... THIS IS REALLY GOING TO
BOTHER ME!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC)

~~~
alwold
It looks like EBCDIC supports lower case letters just fine. Any idea why they
used all uppercase? I've noticed use of all uppercase on a lot of old systems,
and always sort of wondered why. Is there a good technical reason? Maybe a
data type that uses less space per letter?

~~~
Someone
EBCDIC has lowercase because it is _Extended_.
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCD_(6-bit)](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCD_\(6-bit\)):

 _" BCD ("Binary-Coded Decimal"), also called alphanumeric BCD, alphameric
BCD, BCD Interchange Code, or BCDIC, is a family of representations of
numerals, uppercase Latin letters, and some special and control characters as
six-bit character codes.

[...]

IBM later created the 8-bit code EBCDIC (Extended Binary-coded Decimal
Interchange Code) based on BCD."_

------
deathanatos
The key itself — Caps Lock — I believe is useless, and occupies valuable real
estate. The concept of caps lock, I'm undecided.

As programmer, the most common arguments I hear are usually about the
occasional use of it for say, C_IDENTIFIERS[1]. Or perhaps you want to scream,
but not hold down shift. Who am I to judge?

Some OSs support (in particular, I know Linux does) a thing called "two shift
caps". If you want caps lock, you hit both shift keys simultaneously. Same
thing to deactivate. Now, you still have your caps lock for those rare times
when you want it, but the physical key is freed up for Control, or Escape, or
whatever you fancy.

I personally think it's a wonderful thing, and would love to see it catch on
as standard, though I don't know if that'll ever happen.

[1]: gU<movement> in vim helps a lot though.

------
ams6110
Is it mostly a tech thing with the upper case hatred? I know several people
who type everything in upper case. Emails, texts, everything. I think people
who don't spend their working lives at a keyboard may view caps-lock as making
typing easier.

~~~
cmsmith
Specifications and annotations on construction drawings are typically all
caps, as well. In that context, it looks more official and also more legible
at various magnification levels.

~~~
greenyoda
And U.S. National Weather Service communications are also entirely in upper
case. I guess that there are still remote locations that receive them on
teletypes that only have upper case. Here's an example:

[http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=OK...](http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=OKX&product=RWS)

------
_cudgel
I loathe the caps lock key. The first thing I'll do with a brand-new Mac is
remap it to Control (SysPrefs -> Keybd -> Modifier Keys). Because thats where
the control key belongs, dammit!

Still, from time to time I do type things in all caps. Once or twice I've even
considered whether it would be wise to re-enable the caps lock key. In the
end, I keep it remapped. My natural tendency is to be acerbic, and caps lock
doesn't help me tone that down -- which I need to do. If I didn't, I can
imagine that leaving caps lock on permanently would permanently damage some of
the relationships I have, particularly those that are mostly online.

------
bufordsharkley
I learned to type by using the Caps Lock in lieu of the Shift key-- if it's
ever removed from keyboards, I'll be completely screwed.

(I hate two-finger combinations, and am apparently not alone in this-- record-
holding speed-typist Sean Wrona uses Caps Lock to capitalize[0])

I dream of a completely modal keyboard set-up such that I can only press one
finger at any one time, and then I can get remap Shift permanently.

[0] [http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/ultimate-typing-champion-
sha...](http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/ultimate-typing-champion-share-his-
typing-secrets/)

~~~
bufordsharkley
This is a problem on Ubuntu (my main machine), as the Caps Lock lags enough
that if you type at a normal speed:

THis STarts HAppening. (Not a problem for Windows or OSX systems, I can
report)

Most bug reports for this behavior tend to be ignored[0].

[0]
[http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1556152](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1556152)

------
kevin_thibedeau
I love caps lock. Every once in a while I need to type lots of text in all
caps and I like not having to ride the shift key when doing this.

~~~
Aldo_MX
I personally can't understand why does people hate so much the Caps Lock
key... The shift key gets my pinky finger tired and I prefer to use it just
for symbols.

~~~
_asummers
The number of times I need to use caps lock is much lower than the number of
times I accidentally hit it while doing something else, causing me to have to
correct whatever I mistakenly capitalized. This means that it is a net
negative in terms of time. That being said, the real issue I think is that it
takes such a prominent place on the keyboard that could be used for more
important keys.

------
blissofbeing
Caps lock for me is delete.

Think about how often you hit delete then think about how far away it is, then
remap it to capslocks and enjoy.

If your on a Mac use this awesome utility to easily remap your capslock to the
delete key:
[https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/seil.html.en](https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/seil.html.en)

------
sssilver
Most people who believe Caps Lock can be ditched are probably slow typists.
How on earth do you touch type an acronym quickly without using Caps Lock?

It's also ridiculous that a company like Google would ditch a key just like
that. Do they research stuff before taking drastic actions?

------
_Adam
I turned on num lock for a week once, but I didn't write a blog post about
it...

~~~
GhotiFish
Yah well numlock isn't exactly sitting in prime real-estate.

~~~
touristtam
No but it is another this that is antiquated about our keyboard layout: the
numpad is a legacy that isn't really usefull. I have changed from a full size
keyboard layout to tenkeyless one a couple of years ago, and the only time I
am missing it, is when I have to print a character through an ASCII code (like
those accent in German or French).

------
shenanigoat
FACSINATING! PRAY TELL, WHAT AMAZING THINGS DID YOU LEARN?

sorry...grumpy at the internet.

edit: used FASCINATING twice.

------
ahoge
The caps lock key is very useful, if you rebind it to something else.

I use it for Enso, which lets you start programs, open files, spellcheck,
count words, do math, and things like that.

Using it to swtich between input methods is another good choice.

------
aragot
I've always been i trigued by the CAPS in the BSD license. On what criteria
was the text uppercased? Does it give it more weight in a court? Then why
isn't every clause uppercased?

------
jay_kyburz
ITS BEEN 6 HOURS. I CAN'T BELIEVE THERE ARE NO ALL CAP COMMENTS!

~~~
X-combinator
20 MINUTES AND YOUR CAP(ER) REPLY-ER IS HERE

~~~
X-combinator
iTs bEeN 6 HoUrS. i cAn't bElIeVe tHeRe aRe nO AlL CaP CoMmEnTs!

USING - [http://convertcase.net/](http://convertcase.net/)

------
vacri
_You can’t write “I THINK” or “PERHAPS” in all caps._

Interesting point, I think.

~~~
_cudgel
Perhaps.

------
yourad_io

        SELECT CONTENT FROM ARTICLE;
        > 0 rows returned.

~~~
ekimekim
The way I was trained:

    
    
        SELECT content FROM article;
    

The uppers are keywords, the lowers are arguments (column and table name).

~~~
yourad_io
My sensei was partly deaf, so he'd shout everything.

------
rwfilice
FIRST

~~~
rwfilice
Wait what? I thought this was a relevant reference to all-caps usage. Did they
think I was serious?

------
serve_yay
People are unbelievably obnoxious about this. You really think the person is
yelling and has no idea how to communicate? If so, consider that you may be
stupider than the people whose intelligence you're insulting. Patrice O'Neal
had a great bit about this.

~~~
yourad_io

        I t   i s   a s   s t r a n g e   a n d   u n n e c e s s a r y   a s   t h i s .

