Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Dan Sommers]

On Sun, 17 Apr 2016 07:34:20 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 7:22 AM, Dan Sommers <dan at tombstonezero.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, 16 Apr 2016 16:44:30 -0400, Random832 wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016, at 16:21, Ben Finney wrote:
>>>> * Oh, come on, no-one would use U+000C FORM FEED in source code.
>>>
>>> Some text editors have shortcuts to navigate to the previous/next line
>>> that begins with a form feed.
>>
>> Add these to the list of myths:
>>
>> * All producers use the same tools to produce code.
>> * All consumers use the same tools to consume code.
>> * All entities that produce and consume code use the same tools.
>> * All entities use the same tools to consume code that they do to produce it.
> 
> Those are definitely myths, but are they sufficiently connected to PEP 8?
> 
> ChrisA

PEP8 is all about readability, and we all read source code through one
tool and/or another.  Anecdotally, a lot of readability arguments
(including that one about some text editors treating U+000C as a special
case) end up being as much about the tools we use as they are about the
source code itself.

We (this mailing list, or maybe it was the python-ideas mailing list)
just had a thread about non-ASCII characters in identifiers.  One of the
main argument against is the confusables (A vs Α vs А).  Sufficient
tooling, however, could render (pun intended) that argument moot.  Not
too long ago, one of the main arguments against was that not everyone's
tools could even render Α or А.