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

[Ryan Gonzalez]

IMO it's good to have some sort of visual differentiation between constants
and normal values. A lot of camelCase-based style guides use a k prefix
(e.g. kMyValue), but Python doesn't use it (other than PascalCase for
classes). If there were to be an alternative to ALL_CAPS for constants, I
guess maybe it'd also be PascalCase?

That being said, Dart 2 has dropped ALL_CAPS constants from its style
guide, and although everyone's survived just fine, I do somewhat miss being
able to immediately be able to see where something is coming from solely
from the case.

Side note: it seems like ALL_CAPS kind of came from macros being using for
constants in C and persisted.

--
Ryan (ライアン)
Yoko Shimomura, ryo (supercell/EGOIST), Hiroyuki Sawano >> everyone else
https://refi64.com/

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, 1:02 PM Abe Dillon <abedillon at gmail.com wrote:

> 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.
> _______________________________________________
> Python-ideas mailing list
> Python-ideas at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas
> Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/attachments/20190104/180647e8/attachment.html>