Good programming style

[Sean DiZazzo]

On Sep 14, 7:10 pm, Grant Edwards <gra... at visi.com> wrote:
> On 2008-09-15, Ben Finney <bignose+hates-s... at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Grant Edwards <gra... at visi.com> writes:
> >> On 2008-09-14, Ben Finney <bignose+hates-s... at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>
> >>> Second: please do yourself a favour and drop the
> >>> camelCaseNames. Follow PEP 8
> >>> <URL:http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008> for style and
> >>> naming in your Python code.
>
> >> If he finds camelcase more readable and easier to type (as do
> >> I), how is switching to underscores "doing himself a favor"?
>
> >> I'm generally in favor of using a consistent naming style
> >> throughout a project, but I don't see why the naming style
> >> used in my source code should be subject to somebody else's
> >> arbitrary standard.
>
> > Because the code we write rarely stays isolated from other
> > code. There is an existing convention,
>
> There are many existing conventions.
>
> > and it's better to pick a (sufficiently sane) style convention
> > and stick to it than argue about what the convention should
> > be.
>
> I suppose if everybody agreed to pick one, and all the source
> code in the world was changed to meet it, that would "a good
> thing".  It just seems like a goal so unrealistic as to make it
> a bit of an overstatement to tell people they're better off
> following convention X than following convention Y.
>
> When packages as significant as wxPython use naming conventions
> other than PEP 8, I find it hard to make a case that the PEP 8
> naming convention is any better than any other.
>
> >> When it comes to writing code intended for the standard
> >> library in the main Python distribution, I would certainly
> >> defer to the existing standard as defined in PEP 8.  However,
> >> I don't see any reason that style should be imposed on all
> >> everybody else.
>
> > Who's imposing? I'm saying it's a good idea for everyone to do
> > it, and going so far as to say that one is doing oneself a
> > favour by following the convention. I have no more power than
> > you to "impose" convention on anyone.
>
> My apologies -- "impose" was too strong a word to use.
>
> If we were starting from scratch and there was no extant source
> code in the world, then it would make sense to encourage
> everybody to pick one convention. [I still think it would be
> rather quixotic.] But, there are so many projects out there
> with naming conventions other than PEP 8, that I don't see how
> there's an advantage to picking one over another (except for
> the obvious also-rans like "all upper case, no vowels, and a
> maximum length of 6 characters").
>
> I'll agree that sticking with a single convention within a
> project is definitely a good thing.
>
> I'm personally aware of mixed/camel-case projects from 25+
> years ago, so I'm afraid PEP 8 came along a bit too late...
>
> --
> Grant

+1

CamelCase FTW!

~Sean