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

[Abe Dillon]

>
> So you're saying we should prefer a future where it's an inconsistent mess?

No. And please don't straw man. It's a very annoying argumentative tactic.
I prefer a future where all caps aren't used. I understand that the change
I propose won't magically transport us there, but I don't think it
justifies encouraging all caps. As it is, the mix of all caps, camel-case,
and snake-case IS and inconsistent and visual mess. Discouraging all caps
will only result in a diminishing occurrence of all caps.

it's.more important to have a standard than what that standard is. And we
> do have a strong standard today.

I understand that there's a barrier to change, but there's also a circular
logic to resisting change because adhering to a standard is good.

How bad would it really be to remove the line about constants being all
caps from PEP-8?

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 2:55 PM Anders Hovmöller <boxed at killingar.net> wrote:

> So you're saying we should prefer a future where it's an inconsistent
> mess? I agree with you that the C standard is ugly but it's.more important
> to have a standard than what that standard is. And we do have a strong
> standard today.
>
> -1 from me
>
> / Anders
>
> On 4 Jan 2019, at 20:01, 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.
>
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