[Pypentago-devel] Code styleguide

[Florian M. <flo...@ai...>]

Hello.
I have been thinking that maybe we should introduce a code style
convention, so the source code is easier to read due to being uniform.
On the other hand, it may be better if every one can use his own style
so it is easier to develop for him.

If we agree on making a convention, there are three proposals that are
possible. One would be PEP8, the Python styleguide, compatibility and
the other two would be adapting the style of the modules we are using,
namely Twisted or wxPython.

I think PEP8 has several advantages beside being the official Python
style. The first is, because our external modules are *not* compatible
to PEP8 we would never fall into naming issues overwriting their
methods, of course this cannot be applied to class names, as they are
the same in every of those three.
The other would be that every Python developer should be able to read
our code pretty well, as most of them have read the PEP8. Also I think
the style is really clear and easy to read, but that is just my opinion.
In this style, methods and functions have the same convention, but it is
easy to tell from those two because methods have self as their first
attribute.

The Twisted style is the one I am using at the moment, because I somehow
got used to it. There is not much difference between it and the PEP8,
besides the convention for the method names.
The advantage would be that the code looks uniform to the Twisted
methods that we import, but then it does not fit the wxPython ones
either. I personally like to name functions PEP8 style when using this,
thus it is methodName but function_name, but this is subject to changes.

Last and, for me, least the wxPython style. It is in fact C++ style as
wxWidgets is C++ and wxPython is just a wrapper for it, thus not
changing the naming convention.
I like it least because with it it is hard to tell whether something is
a class, method or function. It is actually pretty near to the Java
style, something you might like.

Just look at the code samples below to see which one you like best.
If you do not like the idea of a code style convention, feel free to say
that too.

[1] PEP8: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/59160/
[2] Twisted: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/60063/
[3] wxPython: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/60064/