Python Worst Practices

[Gregory Ewing]

Mario Figueiredo wrote:
> But could you please point us to the ISO that details the
> international standard for variable names? Or failing that, to the
> public discussion that took place and decided American-English is the
> de-facto language for variable names?

American became the standard for variable names the same
way most de-facto standards come into being -- by historical
accident and network effects. Many of the commonly-used
libraries happen to be written by Americans, and programming
languages being the way they are, anyone who uses them
has to follow suit.

When I'm programming I always spell it "color", even when
I don't strictly have to, because having two spellings in
the same body of code would be too confusing for everyone,
myself included.

But in documentation, in contexts where it's not critical,
I'm more likely to use the spelling I'm most familiar
with, which is "colour". I can't imagine any English
speaker, native or otherwise, being unable to cope with
that.

-- 
Greg