learning python ...

[Jon Ribbens]

On 2021-05-24, Alan Gauld <alan.gauld at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On 24/05/2021 16:54, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>
>> In my early days of writing python, I created lists named "list",
>> dictionaries named "dict", and strings named "str". I mostly know better
>> now, but sometimes still need to restrain my fingers.
>
> I think most newbie programmers make that mistake. I certainly
> did when learning Pascal back in the 80's.
>
> But I was lucky, the tutorials were run by a guy who penalized
> bad variable names severely and took a half-mark off for every
> bad name. We very quickly learned to choose names that were
> descriptive of the purpose rather than the type.

Tricky when you're writing general utility functions.
What would you call the argument to a function that
returns, say, an upper-cased version of its input?
(Pretending for a moment that Python didn't already
have such a function built-in ;-) )

I mean, sure, you could call it "inputString" or
something but that sort of thing gets annoyingly
verbose very quickly. If you're using type
annotations then "input: str" would be ok but if
you're not then just "input" is overly opaque
(not to mention shadowing a builtin).

This is why it's good when languages have conventions
like "types and classes start with an upper-case letter",
so that you can do "string = String()" without problems...