Survey on Case Sensitivity
in Programming Languages

On July 20, 2001 I posted a survey to two mailing lists for AP Computer Science teachers [1], whose membership approximate 1900 and 450, respectively. There is a great deal of overlap in membership between the two lists, and not all members are teachers, so this survey probably went out to fewer than 2000 total teachers of AP Computer Science. As of August 17, 2001 I had received 129 responses.

The purpose of the survey, was to find out the point of view of teachers of computer science on the matter of case-sensitive identifiers and keywords in computer language, especially with respect to the difficulty (if any) caused to students in learning the language and programming skills due to case-sensitivity.

The motivation for the survey came from a discussion in the newsgroup comp.lang.python. The developers of the Python language are concerned about problems that new programmers may face as a result of Python's case-sensitivity, and are considering whether changing the language to case-insensitive would be advisable. After reading the discussions in comp.lang.python, it seemed to me that we needed input from teachers who work with students in this area. Their experiences and expertise could help in guiding this decision.

Thank you to all of the teachers who took the time to respond. While this topic does not directly affect the AP course, it can affect decisions about introductory courses and influence ideas about computer science instruction in general.

The results of the survey have now been compiled and stored in an online database. All of the responses are available here. Please use the menu above to find your way around.

[1] College Board's AP-CompSci list and Unofficial List: AP Computer Science Teachers.