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[Richard Prosser]

Is there any mileage in having a naming convention to indicate the type of
a variable? I have never really liked the fact that the Python 'duck
typing' policy is so lax, yet the new "Type Hints" package for Python 3 is
rather clumsy, IMO.


For example:

github_response = requests.get('https://api.github.com/user',
auth=('user', 'pass'))
 # Derived from http://docs.python-requests.org/en/master.


The above request returns a Response
<http://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/api/#requests.Response> object
and so the variable has 'response' in its name.


Likewise:

word_count = total_words_in_file('text_file')

where 'count' has been defined (in the IDE, by the user perhaps) as an
Integer and the function is known to return an Integer, perhaps via a local
'count' or 'total' variable.



I know that this has been attempted before but I think that an IDE like
PyCharm could actually check variable usage and issue a warning if a
conflict is detected. Also earlier usages of this 'Hungarian Notation' have
largely been applied to compiled languages - rather strangely, in the case
of known types - rather than an interpreted one like Python.


Please note that I have shown suffixes above but prefixes could also be
valid. I am not sure about relying on 'type strings' *within* a variable
name however.

Is this idea feasible, do you think?


Thanks ...

Richard

PS Originally posted in
https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/207286145--Hungarian-Notation-and-type-checking
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