As James Brown and Aretha Franklin are the royalty of soul, PascalCase and camelCase have reigned1 over semantic coding style for decades. However, both suffer from several problems, including

  • Comprehensibility
  • Clarity
  • Consistency

and, in my view, their biggest failure: SIMPLICITY (which equally irritatingly doesn't start with "C").

It's time for a new claiment to the throne. An approach that rewards higher virtues. Virtues such as

  • Creativity
  • Courage
  • Contrariness

and, in my view, its Diana Ross-level supreme value: CONFUSION (note the completion of "C"s)

Coding doesn't attract nearly enough professionals, and is abysmally populated by arrogant, infantile, over-the-hill, white males like me. We need new blood! Fresh brains! Uncooked appendages! I firmly believe a tidal wave of NUtCasErs is on the software oceanic horizon.

To get started with NUtCasE, just follow these six utterly straightforward rules.

  1. Any casing is allowed as long as it doesn't conflict with other rules.2

    Example: ranOSBoBSOnar()3

  2. All names begin with a capital letter unless it’s the letter that begins your residential state’s capital.4

    Example: ranOSBoBSOnar()3

  3. Methods and constants begin capitalized if an odd numbered letter, lower case if even numbered.5

    Example: ranOSBoBSOnar()3

  4. The third letter is always lower case, except on Tuesdays.6

    Example: ranOSBoBSOnar()3

  5. If a name has exactly two Bs, those Bs are always capitalized in honor of Buckaroo Banzai.7

    Example: ranOSBoBSOnar()3

  6. Palindromes must mirror case while matching as many rules as possible. If an in-use palindrome can match more rules, the name must change everywhere it occurs on Earth.8

    Example: ranOSBoBSOnar()3

A NUtCasE linter is not in the works, but if anyone wants to develop one that'd be great.

Together, we can bring joy and insanity back to coding.

NUtCasE: Embrace the inevitable confusion9

  1. Not to be confused with rein or rain or Rayne or Rane or Raine or Raein.↩

  2. Inspired by Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics↩

  3. That's "Ran OS BOB10 SONAR", in the extremely unlikely case it isn't perfectly clear.↩↩↩↩↩↩

  4. I live in Denver, Colorado.↩

  5. No reference.↩

  6. Inspired by the game of Fizzbin.↩

  7. The great humanitarian musician hero surgeon Buckaroo Banzai, who clearly was inspired in his youth by the great humanitarian adventurer hero surgeon Doc Savage. Remember, no matter where you go...there you are.↩

  8. I've never understood why "palindrome" isn't, itself, a palindrome. Palindrome.↩

  9. Inspired by Kelly Grovier, from an article about Raphael's "The School of Athens." The School of Athens: A detail hidden in a masterpiece↩

  10. OS BOB11 was a famously little-known operating system created in the 1970s for the sport of underwater badminton.↩

  11. BOB stands for Brigadiers of Badminton.↩