Underscoring the Need for CamelCase

Space the Final Front Tier

It is a little known fact that most programming languages allow spaces in their identifiers. By identifiers, I mean such things as variable, function or method names, or just about anything that isn't a reserved word. I mention this fact because the previous post included a one line basic game that didn't have a single space, and required the services of a good cryptanalyst to decipher. I didn't want you to get the idea that I thought this was good form; far from it. In fact I believe that with enough effort, it is possible to make the source for a program read like pretty fair English.

Embedded spaces were used in some extreme programming examples that ended up obfuscating the meaning more than it helped:

For a day in the life := this day to a far distant future
. perform some meaningful calculation on the date

The problem is not so much the embedded spaces per se, but the fact that their use seems to encourage unnecessary verbosity. There was also another problem with spaces that appeared about the time that good programming editors came along; it was difficult to select them for copying to another location, and brother, you really didn't want to type these kinds of names more than once. Most editors provide some kind of mechanism for selecting the word under the cursor. Modern GUI programs use a mouse double-click, but it was also available in keyboard only interfaces by using a special control key. The only problem was that the selection ended with the space.

So it became fashionable to use the underscore in place of a space:

For a_day_in_the_life := this_day to a_far_distant_future
. perform_some_meaningful_calculation_on_the_date

So the underscore improved the readability somewhat by making it easier to see where one program element began and the other left off. Underscores are still somewhat popular today, but they also have a problem. It is difficult to type them since it requires a shift key. Also, for a time, there were actually keyboards that didn't include the underscore, which limited its popularity somewhat.

Enter "camel case" (or CamelCase) as the most recent solution to the problem of creating readable multiword identifiers. Our example becomes :

For aDayInTheLife := thisDay to aFarDistantFuture
. performSomeMeaningfulCalculationOnTheDate

Surprisingly, it doesn't seem to have lost any readability once you get used to it. The brain is a pretty adaptable thing when it comes to reading. After all, ancient Latin was often written without spaces between the words, and in all upper case. It works for literature too, although it probably won't catch on.

The lastDayOfMoscow dawned. It was clearBriskAutumnWeather. Just as on ordinarySundays, the bellsOfAllTheChurches rang forMass.

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