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

[David Mertz]

Like everyone other than Abe in this thread, I find judicious use of
CONSTANTS to be highly readable and useful.

Yes, there is a little wiggle room about just how constant a constant has
to be since Python doesn't have a straightforward way to create real
constants. Very rarely I might change a value named in all caps. But the
distinction between a value intended as fixed and one I merely probably
won't change is worth marking typographically.... Especially since there's
no actual Python semantics enforcing it.

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, 2:02 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.
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