[Python-ideas] Consistency in naming [was Re: ...ALL CAPS]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2019 at 11:07:04PM +0100, Anders Hovmöller wrote:
> 
> > The only exception to that is that I wish that ``object`` would be 
> > renamed to Object. That would distinguish between Object, the base class 
> > of all types, and object, an instance of some class. In my personal 
> > opinion, being more clear about that distinction would be worth the pain 
> > in ways that (say) renaming datetime to DateTime would not be.
> 
> Could you detail what that pain would be?

That was described in the part of my email that you deleted. Quoting 
Eric:

Because the hassle involved in making the change, supporting both for a 
long time, invalidating tons of working code, invalidating tutorials, 
migrating existing pickle files, etc. isn't worth any slight gain in 
consistency.


> To me it seems like you'd 
> have both names for a while with deprecation warnings. Doesn't sound 
> too painful. Especially in the datetime case which is already quite 
> painful.

What's painful about it?

- the status quo means "no change", so there is no hassle there;
- we don't have to support two names;
- or manage depreciation warnings;
- no working code is invalidated by "not changing" the class;
- no tutorials or books are invalidated;
- existing pickle files continue to work;
- there are no questions on forums asking "what's the difference 
  between datetime and DateTime, which should I use?"



-- 
Steven