From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: dave@horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 16:47:07 +1000 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] terminal - just for fun In-Reply-To: <20140802034551.GA30208@eureka.lemis.com> References: <53db573b.rwfkVi3XCkWueUYL%dnied@tiscali.it> <20140801105029.58656ubc05nkkh2d@webmail.mhorton.net> <20140801203508.GF13476@mercury.ccil.org> <70C2F527-099F-4BE8-BBFB-CBCAAAEB40C0@tfeb.org> <20140802034551.GA30208@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 2 Aug 2014, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > Basically, until the introduction of ASCII, there weren't many systems > with lower case. IBM had lower case characters with EBCDIC, but didn't > seem to use them. I wrote code in FORTRAN and COBOL before the > introduction of lower-case, but later compilers I've seen for both > languages accepted lower case. ISTR that the mighty 1403 printer had the "text train" - type TN, if memory serves. It slowed down printing (not as many duplications) but you got lower case and a few more symbols. You quickly learned to never leave a cup of coffee on the lid, because it lifted automatically... > I think the real reason for the retention of upper case in these > languages was because it made people feel leet. "We're computer > programmers, we write in upper case". It's like the disregard for > normal punctuation that some style guides require( like putting spaces > on the wrong sides of parentheses, or omitting them where required ). I had a boss once who had this annoying habit of writing "(\ blah\ )" in his Nroff documents. -- Dave