PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Stefan Behnel]

Eric Brunel wrote:
> On Tue, 15 May 2007 15:57:32 +0200, Stefan Behnel
>> In-house developers are rather for this PEP as they see the advantage of
>> expressing concepts in the way the "non-techies" talk about it.
> 
> No: I *am* an "in-house" developer. The argument is not
> public/open-source against private/industrial. As I said in some of my
> earlier posts, any code can pass through many people in its life, people
> not having the same language. I dare to say that starting a project
> today in any other language than english is almost irresponsible: the
> chances that it will get at least read by people not talking the same
> language as the original coders are very close to 100%, even if it
> always stays "private".

Ok, so I'm an Open-Source guy who happens to work in-house. And I'm a
supporter of PEP 3131. I admit that I was simplifying in my round-up. :)

But I would say that "irresponsible" is a pretty self-centered word in this
context. Can't you imagine that those who take the "irresponsible" decisions
of working on (and starting) projects in "another language than English" are
maybe as responsible as you are when you take the decision of starting a
project in English, but in a different context? It all depends on the specific
constraints of the project, i.e. environment, developer skills, domain, ...

The more complex an application domain, the more important is clear and
correct domain terminology. And software developers just don't have that. They
know their own domain (software development with all those concepts, languages
and keywords), but there is a reason why they develop software for those who
know the complex professional domain in detail but do not know how to develop
software. And it's a good idea to name things in a way that is consistent with
those who know the professional domain.

That's why keywords are taken from the domain of software development and
identifiers are taken (mostly) from the application domain. And that's why I
support PEP 3131.

Stefan