A visual seam, not a programming symbol
An identifier is a name a program uses for something such as a variable, function, or class. In `myVariableName`, the capital letters give readers clues about where the component words begin. They do not create actual spaces: to the language, the whole string is one identifier, and changing its capitalization can make it a different name.
That distinction matters. Camel case is mainly a convention for people, not a command telling the computer how to split a name. A compiler can use the capital letters if a tool is specifically built to analyze naming patterns, but ordinary code refers to the identifier as a single sequence of characters.
Why programmers use it
Names often appear repeatedly—in declarations, function calls, and error messages—so a compact name is convenient. Capitalization supplies word boundaries without adding punctuation. It also lets a team apply a consistent visual style across a codebase, making names easier to scan alongside the logic they describe.
The convention has limits. A name containing an abbreviation, such as `readURLValue`, can be harder to parse at a glance because readers may disagree about where the word boundaries fall. And different languages or teams may favor other styles, such as underscores between words or capitalizing the first word as well. The practical payoff is consistency: once a project settles on a style, related names are easier to recognize, even though the computer still treats each one as a single identifier.
