Yet Another Case Question

[Alex Martelli]

Greg Ewing (using news.cis.dfn.de) wrote:

> Alex Martelli wrote:
>> Case sensitivity does NOT enforce the common coding convention
>> you seem to like so much.  Don't you think math.pi IS a constant?
   ...
> The Python standard library certainly leaves something
> to be desired in the area of uniform naming conventions.
> But to me that's an argument for tidying it up, and

Breaking backwards compatibility?  Shudder...

Point is, I was replying to an absurd claim that case
sensitivity _enforces_ a certain specific convention about 
capitalization, and pointing out that it most certainly
does nothing of the kind -- and the standard Python library
provides lots and lots of handy examples.

> documenting a set of conventions for future contributors
> to follow -- not for abandoning case-sensitivity.

"That's what so great about standards, there are so many
you can chose among".  Many capitalization conventionS
(plural) are indeed documented in the Python style guide
PEP.  Of course a poor soul has no way to guess which one
of those is applied in each of hundreds and hundreds of
cases, but, hey, discipline in memorizing is good for you,
innit?

And sure, just because it's misused over and over again is
definitely no reason to accept that a certain feature IS
heavily prone to misuse, and the language would be better 
off without it.  It's far better to stick to whatever
opinions you've already decided in advance you WANT to
have, and criticize every single one of those misuses as
being a deprecable exception to the invariable bliss and
wonder the feature in question is nearly sure to bring.
Why make it harder by looking at FACTS?


Alex