On Sat, Jan 5, 2019 at 10:29 AM Abe Dillon <abedil...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> How do you propose, instead, for the constantness of something to be >> indicated? > > That's a good question. I honestly don't use constants all that much...
Just to be clear here: you're trying to say that the ALL_CAPS_NAME convention is unnecessary, but you don't use constants. That kinda weakens your argument a bit :) > 1) provide a property to access an otherwise _plz_dont_touch_variable > 2) Use an Enum > 3) Use documentation to say: treat this as constant > 4) Rely upon consenting adults to not change variables outside of scope. It's > weird to manipulate math.pi because it's in a separate module. > > I stopped using all caps a long time ago and it just hasn't created a problem > because manipulating global variables without knowing what they are is such a > bad idea to begin with. The whole point of the all-caps globals is to tell you a lot about what they are. For instance, I will often use a module-level constant for a file or path name; within the module, it is deliberately treated as a constant, but if you import the module somewhere else, you could reassign it before calling any functions in the module, and they'll all use the changed path. We use well-chosen variable names to avoid needing special properties or documentation to explain how something is to be used. It's far better to distinguish between "thing" and "things" than to have to say "thing" and "array_of_thing". The whole "consenting adults" policy has to be built on clear indications, and the name of something is a vital part of that. It's up to you whether you actually use the all-caps convention in your own code or not, but IMO it is an extremely useful convention to have in the toolbox, and should be kept. ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
