
Against Camel Case - blasdel
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/magazine/29FOB-onlanguage-t.html
======
decklin
Despite what you might expect, there is actually a fascinating article behind
this poorly-titled link; it starts at the fifth paragraph.

------
rflrob
It might be folly to try to argue with language anti-evolutionists, but when
spacing was added to scripts (according to the author, most recently during
the middle ages), minuscule and majuscule were not consistently used at the
beginning of sentences. One could make the point that we only really need
spacing OR case differences, and don't need both.

~~~
caleb_crain
Indeed, Paul Saenger, the scholar I quote in the article, writes that during
the transitional period, capitals were sometimes used to mark word boundaries
in run-together text. Unexpectedly, though, the last letter of a word was more
often capitalized than the first.

~~~
gecko
I'm not sure whether you're aware of this, but many older scripts, including
all of the Semitic scripts, actually write letters entirely differently when
they appear at the end of a word. Given that the monks who began employing
majuscule and minuscule would surely have been familiar with Hebrew script,
I'm hardly surprised they initially went to making the last letter significant
instead of the first.

~~~
kingkilr
Not all Hebrew letters are different when they appear at the end of a word,
just 4 out of 22 letters (if I remember correctly) do.

~~~
maw
It's true of Arabic, though; see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Primary_letters>.

------
randallsquared
_[In the New York Times] Thereafter every brand name was permitted up to three
idiosyncratic majuscules._

Um, what? It's a brand name. Either you render it correctly, or you don't;
there are no typographic decisions to be made unless you're committed to
mangling it in the first place, right?

~~~
etal
A press release from a typical company will throw as much glitter on their own
brand name as possible, and usually butcher the surrounding language a bit
too:

"the new FRISBEE [TM] brand Flying Disk..."

If a writer takes this literally, a copy editor has to tone it down or else
the brand name will dominate the article text and make it look like an ad,
too: "It's a Frisbee." Fun variants include meaningless alternating caps, or a
single lowercase 'i' inside an otherwise all-caps word.

Newspapers want to use the brand name, not the logo or an ASCII attempt at
one; and in decades past, fixing the caps helped comprehension rather than
hurting it. They considered capitalization part of presentation, not content.
(Shouldn't a brand name survive an all-caps typeface?)

~~~
sp332
In the USA you can't use the brand name as a noun, or the owner risks losing
legal control over the mark. Hence "FRISBEE [TM] brand Flying Disk."

~~~
etal
Only if it's used casually as a generic term. Keeping it uppercased proper
noun (Frisbee) respects the trademark as far as the law is concerned, so that
was the Associated Press guideline. Adding [TM] lets the owner emphasize that
the trademark was applied for, (R) means it's fully registered, but neither
symbol is required for mentioning the brand in print -- just simple
capitalization is enough to respect the trademark.

------
100k
I won't go as far as the author but I think camel cased names are going to
look pretty dated in the future.

As Ken MacLeod put it in "The Star Fraction", written in 1995 and set in the
mid-twenty first century:

"The name [FreeSpace] had once seemed trendy, but now dated us painfully -
'very TwenCen', as I'd overheard someone say..."

~~~
eru
> As Ken MacLeod put it [...]

Ironic name, don't you think?

------
ynniv
This is infuriating coming from the Times. Are they similarly disgruntled with
FedEx? AmEx? Camel-case capitalization is used to create enforceable
trademarks. It is the unfortunate truth that legally enforceable trademarks
have to be substantially not generic, and this leads itself to quirky names
like Kleenex and ex-lax.

This is particularly bothersome: "I could print it here to show you, but I
refuse to allow my prose to be so disfigured." Camel-case names are not
Voldemort; you should not talk about not talking about them. If Cain is so
concerned, he should do the simple thing and call it a mobile phone, or a
music player.

This is journalistic drivel, and tarnishes my opinion of the Times.

~~~
lucumo
Columns are the words of their author, not the newspaper. They don't
necessarily agree with the opinions of the paper.

On the same note, columns aren't news items or reports. They are opinion
pieces. To call it "journalistic drivel"—or "journalistic" at all—is
unjustified.

Columns are meant to give opinions. It's not unusual to see columns written
with the intent of giving an opinion that's opposite to the one held by
average readers. The opinion of the newspaper's editors is usually given in
the editorial.

~~~
ynniv
> To call it "journalistic drivel"—or "journalistic" at all—is unjustified.

You're right, and in retrospect I'm surprised that I used that word. These
days I expect this sort of inane rant from someone's blog that I will ignore
in the future, not "nytimes.com". Maybe blogs have made opinion columns
irrelevant? I can see how papers might have been boring in the past, but today
we have an infinite tap of ranting idiots... maybe the papers should stick to
journalism?

------
jeroen
I always thought it was camelCase and PascalCase. Googling gives me a handful
of articles that support that distinction, but wikipedia doesn't make the
separation.

Is the term PascalCase widespread, or does everyone just call it CamelCase?

~~~
sp332
I'd once heard the difference described as BactrianCase and dromedaryCase :)

------
blasdel
An online bibliographical supplement: [http://www.steamthing.com/2009/11/the-
kneecapping-of-interca...](http://www.steamthing.com/2009/11/the-kneecapping-
of-intercapping.html)

~~~
texel
I much prefer William Safire's treatment linked from that bibliography:
[http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/20/magazine/jammedtogether-
na...](http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/20/magazine/jammedtogether-names-
inc.html)

Safire seems to treat the whole thing with a sense of playfulness and levity,
as if he realizes that the very purpose of a language is to evolve. Crain's
article is preachy and disdainful- he might as well shoo us with a broom and
tell us to get off his lawn.

~~~
gabrielroth
The tone you call 'preachy and disdainful' I find humorous and self-aware.
Likewise the conceit of refusing to print any camel-case terms. "I could print
it here to show you, but I refuse to allow my prose to be so disfigured": it's
a parody of a grumpy-old-man routine. I assume he's sincere in his distaste
for inner caps, but he plainly recognizes that it makes him sound like an old
codger, and he's playing that up for comic effect.

~~~
texel
That could be, and I certainly did a double-take when I saw this his blog is
called "Steamboats are ruining everything." Still, at first blush, any winking
and/or nodding was lost on me, and I usually pick up on that kind of stuff.

~~~
jimbokun
I thought it was pretty clear when he added the part about letting the dog
sleep on the sofa.

------
cubicle67
I guess he's grateful he's not German

~~~
ugh
Huh? Where are camel cases used in German?

~~~
swombat
They're not, but many german words run together. See
<http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html> for humourous examples.

------
lucumo
Camel casing in brands can be confusing when writing.

Is it Paypal or PayPal? Microsoft or MicroSoft? Moneybookers or MoneyBookers?
Macintosh or MacIntosh? Altavista or AltaVista? Wikipedia or WikiPedia? And so
on, and so forth.

Some you can remember. Others may require you to look them up every time.

But well—we already have to worry about spaces and dashes, so I suppose
worrying about one more thing isn't so bothersome.

~~~
goodside
The worst is the Walmart brand, which is controlled by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
They use both forms in their communications depending on which is being
referred to.

------
eru
"Heresy became easier to communicate, and Saenger postulates that word spacing
eventually made possible phenomena like irony, pornography and freedom of
conscience."

------
njharman
I've always associated Camel Case with Perl. So much so that I assumed the
name derived from the Camel Book. But I suppose it's just were I first saw it
used extensively.

Anyway this quote from the article sums up my feelings on both Camel Case and
Perl.

"is regressive — in fact, medieval"

~~~
salvadors
Actually perlstyle suggests avoiding Camel Case:

    
    
      While short identifiers like $gotit are probably ok, use
      underscores to separate words in longer identifiers.  It is
      generally easier to read $var_names_like_this than
      $VarNamesLikeThis, especially for non-native speakers of English.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
It must be a _really_ slow day on Hacker News - how has this got four upvotes?

Really, seriously, can someone tell me why this is even the vaguest bit
interesting or intellectually stimulating to them? I would honestly be
interested in hearing an opinion other than mine.

~~~
ars
Because we use camel case in programming, and we are curious what non
programmers think of it.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Really? Do you _really_ care what non-programmers think of CamelCase? Why not
ask them what they think of using braces, or indentation?

Clearly people think my question detracts from the value of HN because they're
downvoting it, but to me it's worth it to investigate a place where the
opinion of the "community" differs so radically from mine.

I have zero interest in finding out what people think of summation notation,
or bra and ket notation, and, quite frankly, I find it inconceivable (and I
_do_ mean that, unlike Vizzini) that programmers would care what non-
programmers think about CamelCase.

Still, you're being up-voted, I'm being down-voted, so obviously people really
are interested in that. I'm mystified, but I'll accept it as a data point.

ADDED IN EDIT after reading the comment by benatkin to the above:

I am genuinely surprised, confused and puzzled. I'll have to re-think my model
of what the HN readers think satisfies PG's outline of "On-Topic":

    
    
        Anything that good hackers would find interesting ...
        gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. 
    

I'm going away to ponder the response, feeling somewhat bruised and punished
by the "community" I thought I understood and felt at home in.

~~~
raganwald
_feeling somewhat bruised and punished_

Let go of that like you drop a filthy sock! Think of it this way: If you
_never_ disagree with what others put on the front page, how often are you
going to be truly surprised? How often are you going to read something that
you didn't know you liked until you clicked on it?

I like to think that a certain number of articles I detest is a necessary
complement to enjoying a certain number of "Wow, I'd never thought of that"
moments on HN.

I hope that perspective helps you shrug off the odd time you get downmobbed
for calling out an article that doesn't "gratify your intellectual curiosity."

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Thank you for taking the time to reply, and I agree with the points you make.
I do expect to be surprised occasionally by the articles that make the front
page. I do expect there to be articles I hate, and continue to hate after
reading them, and I do expect that there are articles for which I change my
mind and learn something.

What I didn't expect was for people to down-mod me heavily simply for
expressing an opinion that was different to theirs. I thought people would
ignore or reply. I have always regarded down-modding as reserved for things
that don't belong here, and I thought legitimate questioning does belong here.

Clearly I was wrong. The conclusion is that people down-mud me purely because
they disagreed, and couldn't be bothered to articulate their reasons. That's
why I'm disappointed, and feeling set upon.

I had hoped and expected that people would value contributions, even if the
opinions expressed differed from their own. I thought the article was a
complete waste of time, said so, and honestly asked why people thought
otherwise. For that I got hammered.

I'm disappointed.

It won't stop me from reading and contributing, but it has made me stop and
reconsider some things. I'll certainly be less open and more wary.

~~~
sounddust
I voted your post down because you were rude and condescending. Here's an
another (more respectful) way in which you could have written your post:

"I see that this story has a lot of upvotes, but it's not a story that I found
particularly interesting. Could someone give me their perspective on why they
liked this article?"

You also did what is often done to a large number of articles posted to HN:
You asked a variant of "why is this hacker news?!," the answer to which is
always the same: "because X number of people found that it gratified their
intellectual curiosity and voted it up." It gets old after a while, but I
personally wouldn't object to someone repeatedly asking the question as long
as they were respectful and truly interested in the response rather than
asking it as a way to complain.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Hmm. If you found that rude and condescending - and I don't doubt your word -
then I'm rather pleased I didn't write what I first thought, and instead toned
it down to what I thought was comparatively constructive. Obviously not by
enough.

I'll take your comments on board - thank you for taking the time to explain.

~~~
10ren
I agree with sounddust (I can't just upvote, because my upvotes aren't
registering). Although I personally wasn't offended by your attitude (I've
gotten used to people having that attitude on HN), your comment was
objectively prejudicial: "even the vaguest bit interesting". Not neutral or
impartial, which are ideals of the intellectual gratification you seek here...

My personal response is to reply factually, simply ignoring the tone in a
comment, as the guidelines imply (with the "2+2=4" example) - and not to
downvote unless it's egregious.

But maybe it's fortunate in the bigger scheme of things that you were
downvoted - because of this feedback you got. Each little change improves the
site as a whole.

BTW: I was thinking that net 2 downvotes, from 1 to -1 (and now 3 downvotes,
to -2) is not indicative of the opinion of the community as a whole ... but
given that many people vote to adjust a comment score to where they think it
should be, maybe it is representative.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I've up-voted sounddust for you.

I come from a background where the ideas of neutral and impartial are
independent of those of intellectual gratification. In mathematics one has
strong opinions and can state them clearly, and in reply, people can tell you
you're wrong without it being mistaken for a personal attack. I guess I just
let that leak over into here - now being in business I usually keep it under
wraps.

That's what I meant elsewhere when I said I would be less open. In future I
won't be so blunt in my opinions, as am in math, and wrap them more, as I do
in business.

We've done this to death I think - I really appreciate the feedback. Thanks.

~~~
10ren
Thanks! I don't want to prolong the agony - but I'm curious about about
"neutral and impartial" vs. "intellectual gratification."

If one's opinions and emotions distort the facts, it is difficult to have
intellectual gratification, because one cannot see clearly. To me,
intellectual gratification requires absolute honesty, as in science (as
Feynman says). In other words, the problem isn't that someone is offended, but
that one's own vision is distorted.

Perhaps in mathematics this isn't so important because the mathematics itself
is already impartial. :-)

