alt Hacker NewsModula-2 was born into a time when 8-bit char sets with upper- and lowercase letters were common place but syntax highlighting was still not common. This caused the language to be designed with uppercase keywords because it really makes the code easier to read without syntax highlighting.
Oberon inherited this despite syntax highlighting starting to get traction in the 80s. But nowadays it places an unneeded toll on the shift and caps lock keys and makes coding a bit more tedious.
> nowadays it places an unneeded toll on the shift and caps lock keys and makes coding a bit more tedious
Right. But there are evolutions of Oberon without these orthodoxies (e.g. https://github.com/rochus-keller/oberon or https://github.com/rochus-keller/micron) and a few additional features which make it a really powerful but still lean language.