The author is likely using the enlightened coder capitalization rules, which informally are: "don't capitalize stuff". But, for reasons of insecurity and sometimes clarity, it often becomes: "only capitalize proper nouns, acronyms, and 'I'".

I think it's due to a general realization that letter casing was an ancient mistake that plagues writing and case-sensitive filesystems. Having psychologically struggled with it and having been on both sides of the issue, I'm still deeply conflicted about it. Same with using "-"s instead of "_"s.

It’s not enlightened to apply programming semantics to the long form writing. It’s just ignorant that your readers have to suffer.

> general realization

That’s not a general realization, and historical anomalies don’t matter to the reader

> Having psychologically struggled with it and having been on both sides of the issue, I'm still deeply conflicted about it. Same with using "-"s instead of "_"s.

I can't tell, is this sarcasm?

I assume it’s pathname stuff - do you do hn.com/the-file-name or hn.com/the_file_name

Of course the correct answer is “the file name” and let God sort ‘em out - or superchad and use Unicode non breaking spaces.

I feel like i wrote this

This writing actually resonated with me. I, like the author, stumbled into programming, and I've been enjoying the journey so far. In a way, it feels like reading my future self a couple years from now. I think this article would be best for those who have an intermediate understanding of programming in a single high-level language but want to "look under the hood" so to speak. (I think this just means learning C). So it may not be for you, but it was for me.