Long names are doom ?

[Chris Gonnerman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gareth McCaughan" <Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com>
Subject: Re: Long names are doom ?


> In more "normal" languages we combine
> words like_this, likeThis, like-this, like.this or
> however, and then you don't get the inconsistency
> and dislocation when you need to call a function
> "do list loop if not in class". :-)

This points toward one of my few complaints against Python:
the absolute restriction against using a reserved word as a
variable name *even if it is unambiguous*.  In particular,
the common poplib construction:

    conn.pass_ = "password"

would not be ambiguous to a human if it were:

    conn.pass = "password"

but the Python interpreter makes that impossible.

I realize the reason is so that you don't have ambiguous 
constructs like:

    class = 10

but IMHO Python would be better if it were allowed for
attribute access as here:

    myobj.class = 10

for instance.