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

Chris Angelico rosuav at gmail.com
Wed Jan 30 18:24:06 EST 2019


On Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 9:41 AM Abe Dillon <abedillon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [ChrisA]
>>
>> Nobody is saying that the *entire document* should be in all caps.
>
>
> I've never claimed as much. Most of the reasons all caps harm readability hold true whether you're talking about a single word or entire document.

You have implied it by making the claim about single words, and then
citing references that talk about entire documents.

> [ChrisA]
>>
>> Are English paragraphs hard to read because tokens like "HTML" and "IBM" are in all-caps?
>
>
> Acronyms are a different use case for all caps. We can discuss the value proposition for those in another thread if you'd like.
> I will say that I read my share of research papers where acronyms tend to see heavy use and, yes; it can harm readability.

Initialisms (that aren't acronyms) carry information: you read them
out letter by letter rather than as a word (ignoring phonograms etc).
Constants carry information by being in all caps also.

> [ChrisA]
>>
>> Are you going to appeal to Google to have *their* style guide changed too?
>
>
> That's comparing apples and oranges. Python is an open language with an ideas forum about how to improve things. Google generally isn't open to my suggestions. Any given company I work with is much more likely to enforce PEP-8 than Google's style guides. As far as I know, getting Google to adopt a given idea isn't a precondition for the Python community accepting said idea.
>

Both documents are specific to an original context, but have been
adopted elsewhere. If your company has adopted PEP 8, that's your
company's decision. It would equally be your company's decision to use
the Google style guide, or a modified version of either, or a hybrid
of both. If PEP 8 changes, will your company instantly change its
policy to be "use this new version"? They don't have to.

> [ChrisA]
>>
>> treat PEP 8 as a guideline
>
> Again, that's not always an option.
>

Again, that's not PEP 8's problem.

ChrisA


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