[Python-Dev] pep8 reasoning

[Tal Einat]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 4:59 PM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> I will say this: the original preference for underscore_names in PEP 8 was
> spurred by user studies some of our early non-native English speaking users
> conducted many years ago.  We learned that it was more difficult for many of
> them to parse mixedCase names than underscore_names.  I'm afraid I probably no
> longer have references to those studies, but the difference was pronounced,
> IIRC, and I think it's easy to see why.  Underscores can be scanned by the eye
> as spaces, while I'd hypothesize that the brain has to do more work to read
> mixedCase names.

I speak two languages as mother tongues - English and Hebrew. Hebrew
has no capital letters (and is also right-to-left) and is the spoken
and written language in the parts of Israel where I've lived most of
my life. Perhaps because of this, I do find that capital letters don't
quite "jump out" for me and therefore I find mixedCase and CamelCase
harder to grok at a quick glance than under_score_names.

- Tal