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Headless Camels

18 Jul

One problem we have had at Grooveshark is needing to verbally distinguish between CamelCase and camelCase. As you can see, they have the same name. Well, according to Wikipedia they are called lower camelCase and upper CamelCase, but those names are both clunky and probably not particularly intuitive.

Here at Grooveshark we’ve tried to come up with something better. For a while we tried calling upper CamelCase StudlyCaps while calling lower camelCase just camelCase. That didn’t sit well with everyone since even this spelling of STuDLeYCAps meets the definition, so we decided to invent a new word for upper CamelCase: StudleyCamels while still calling lower camelCase camelCase. Then another problem arose: how do you let people know that when you say camelCase you aren’t just failing to be specific?

Enter: headlessCamels (or decappedCamels). The visualization fits: you still have the hump(s), but the head (the leading uppercase) is missing, so you have a headlessCamel. As for StudleyCamels, I visualize a camel proudly sporting studded leather duds, and he’s holding his head high because he’s proud of his studs. But then again, I’m pretty weird.

 
 

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