[Python-ideas] AMEND PEP-8 TO DISCOURAGE ALL CAPS

Abe Dillon abedillon at gmail.com
Fri Jan 4 14:01:51 EST 2019


I keep coming back to this great video <https://vimeo.com/74316116> about
coding style, and one point in particular rings true to me:
ALL_CAPS_IS_OBNOXIOUS

It destroys the visual flow of code and for what? To signify a global,
constant, or Enum? Is that really so important? I don't think so. I think
the all caps style has out-lived its usefulness and needs to go the way of
the dodo.

The last time I saw all caps used appropriately was in a YouTube comment
where some guy was ranting about the communist Jewish banker conspiracy to
control the world. In that case, all caps clearly communicated to me that
the person was a frothing lunatic (thought find the idea of communist
bankers intriguing).

Currently PEP-8 prescribes all caps for constants
<https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#constants> and uses the all cap
variable "FILES" as an example in a different section.
<https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#when-to-use-trailing-commas> It
also appears to be the defacto-standard for enums (based on the
documentation <https://docs.python.org/3/library/enum.html#creating-an-enum>
)

I don't think it's necessary to make any breaking changes. Just pep-8 and
(of less importance) spurious documentation examples.
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