Charles Hixson writes: # I really prefer avoiding underscores in names. Internal capitalization # provides all the break needed for easy reading, and many auxiliary programs # split the parts of an underscored name separately. Well, with one exception, Aleksi has already pretty much expressed my comments on this. (And I guess I haven't encountered the sorts of auxiliary programs that you mention.) The one exception is probably very much a matter of personal aesthetics: I very strongly prefer underscores for easy readability. To me the alternative looks like a hard-to-read, crunched together kludge, and the secondary words look incorrectly capitalized, and I find it much easier to type one shift character repeatedly (i.e. "_") than random shifted letters. All I can say is that I find it interesting and puzzling that apparently many other people apparently don't agree (but I have no idea of what % of Ruby users care one way or another, if at all). If it weren't for the already fairly common use of "_" in Ruby already (and if Matz didn't care one way or the other), I would otherwise simply suggest voting on this, and go along with the result. Conrad Schneiker (This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)