Re:A very common grammatical mistake that programmers make
by dikaiosune on Friday February 06, 2015 @12:30PM
(#9010164)
In camel case, "two words" becomes setUp. I'm not sure that capitalizing 'U' does any good for future readability.
I suppose that in snake case it might be a little clearer, but in many cases it would still be good either way that someone named their method/function/variable fairly descriptively.
Re:A very common grammatical mistake that programmers make
by jcbrand on Saturday February 07, 2015 @03:19AM
(#9013452)
I'm actually ok with it being written "setup" in that case. It's then just a noun and not a verb.
However something like "cleanupInstance" is much better written cleanInstance or cleanUpInstance
This isn't a prescriptivist argument about language itself, it's an argument about a spelling convention (One which is arguably more accurately descriptive of the usage of the words.). Your dictionary link, by spelling "set up" as separate words when used as a verb, agrees with the author.
It's possible that language changes will result in "set up" becoming a fixed, atomic phrase, at which point writing it as one word would make sense. But since both"I'm going to set up the computer" and "I'm going to set the computer up" still sound perfectly natural to my ears as a native speaker, I don't think we've yet reached that point.