[Python-ideas] Consistency in naming [was Re: ...ALL CAPS]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2019 at 02:43:49PM -0500, Eric V. Smith wrote:
> On 2/1/2019 1:59 PM, Mike Miller wrote:

> >Another message here reminded me that the datetime classes are not named 
> >DateTime like they should be.  Why not rename them, PI and E too, with 
> >suitable long-term deprecation period?
> 
> Because the hassle involved in making the change, supporting both for a 
> long time, invalidating tons of working code, invalidating tutorials, 
> migrating existing pickle files, etc. isn't worth any slight gain in 
> consistency.

Indeed. If the change was going to be done, it should have been done in 
Python 3.0. Since we missed the opportunity, the benefit is too small to 
bother until the next(!) round of breaking changes in Python 5000 (if 
there ever is such a major backwards-incompatible version, which there 
probably won't be).

Consistency is a Nice To Have, not a Must Have.

The only exception to that is that I wish that ``object`` would be 
renamed to Object. That would distinguish between Object, the base class 
of all types, and object, an instance of some class. In my personal 
opinion, being more clear about that distinction would be worth the pain 
in ways that (say) renaming datetime to DateTime would not be.


-- 
Steve