Thursday, August 24, 2006

Is programming in CAPS LOCK rude?

I was "talking" to an old friend on yahoo messenger. We met online after a looonnnngg time. The Caps Lock was accidentally switched on. My friend tells me "Stop yelling".

Just recalled the days when I first started with computers when I was in school. I dont remember whether it was BASIC or COBOL, or both, but you have to code in all caps. Does this mean that I am being rude to the computer ?? Or the computer wants me to be rude, or it wont obey me.

By the way, I have forgotten programming in BASIC. Its been over 9 years since I have written a single line in BASIC, except one day when I got my hands on an old Windows98 CD, which has QBasic compiler in extras, and I just tried it out for a while. VB is far too different from the original versions of the language. GWBasic and QBasic were the most common BASIC interpreters available.

But I still do remember some COBOL, where in my previous job, I had to write a utility to transfer data on the mainframes. A small one though, but my experience with COBOL did come in handy. I dont even remember what compiler I used, since when it was halfway through, somebody else took over the ownership. For a language so old, COBOL is still going strong, though it is now being replaced by Java and Csharp. Java might do what C/C++ were unable to do - replace COBOL.

3 Comments:

Blogger In The Shadows said...

Yes, Hiren, Talking in CAPS is considered rude and its the online equivalent of SHOUTING. And strangely enough, programming languages like BASIC and COBOL forced you to shout. But then these were before the advent of the WWW, so typing in CAPS online did not have the same meaning that it has now.

by the way, computers these days are much more obedient by that logic. you dont need to shout at them to get things done :)

August 25, 2006 2:41 AM  
Blogger Persona non gratis said...

they just happen to be acronyms and thats how acronyms are written. The comparison is not valid.

September 12, 2006 9:04 PM  
Blogger In The Shadows said...

they just happen to be acronyms and thats how acronyms are written. The comparison is not valid
========

It sure is. The names BASIC and COBOL are acronyms, but even the programs written in these languages are in ALL-CAPS. Like you say in COBOL..

PROCEDURE DIVISION
DISPLAY "Enter your name:"
ACCEPT Name
DISPLAY "You entered " Name
STOP RUN

I suppose you are not a programmer.

September 14, 2006 5:38 AM  

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