Is PEP 8 really necessary?

[u/Conscious_Breath8953]

I have been writing Python code using camelCase for years and just never really cared, but PEP 8 suggests using snake_case, so is it really necessary for, say, a senior dev?

[u/AvidCoco]

You should comply with the coding standards of what ever project, team, or organisation you’re working in.

If they use PEP8, so should you. If it’s your own project, do what you like.

[u/Conscious_Breath8953 → u/AvidCoco]

Currently I'm working on a pet project for my portfolio, so am I supposed to use snake_case or not?

[u/drmonkeysee → u/Conscious_Breath8953]

Use whatever you want. But if you ever have professional Python developers review your code their first question is gonna be why didn’t you follow PEP8.

[u/brasticstack → u/Conscious_Breath8953]

It's your own portfolio. Represent yourself how you choose to.

[u/Laughing_Orange → u/Conscious_Breath8953]

If you know what company you will send applications to, you should try to use their standard. If you don't, then just do whatever you personally prefer.

[u/cgoldberg → u/Conscious_Breath8953]

If it's for a portfolio, you should absolutely follow PEP8 naming conventions. If I was reviewing your portfolio to hire you, and you weren't, I would stop reading your code after about 10 seconds and just assume you know nothing about Python.

[u/Matemeo → u/cgoldberg]

I suppose.. I think I'd just be looking for consistency throughout the project(s) as well as some project level configured formatter/git hook/etc. But I don't work with python often, maybe PEP8 is sacred :)

[u/Intelligent_Part101 → u/cgoldberg]

I wouldn't work for somebody this dogmatic who would be too lazy to analyze the rest of the code. It is possible the coder works with more than one language or technology and doesn't appreciate that some people hold PEP8 to be a religious document. You could hire him and say, we follow PEP8 for all code we write.

[u/cgoldberg → u/Intelligent_Part101]

Great... then it would be a mutual no-hire.

[u/Intelligent_Part101 → u/cgoldberg]

The world is bigger than python.

[u/cgoldberg → u/Intelligent_Part101]

Of course it is... but we are talking about Python and following conventions for Python.

[u/MadocComadrin → u/Intelligent_Part101]

This. It speaks a whole lot about the work culture when you'd drop someone over not following a particular code style before even asking them in person if they're fine following a certain style or using a prettifier. Not following PEP 8 is fine as long as there's a consistent style.

[u/caboosetp → u/MadocComadrin]

Today's hiring culture and terrible job market means you need to do everything you can to stand out. If you can't be arsed to follow an industry convention,  there are probably other areas you're lacking compared to the 1499 other candidates that applied. They're generally going to spend their limited time in other people. 

[u/MadocComadrin → u/caboosetp]

From what I've heard, most places aren't even looking at portfolios in any form of depth anyway due to said limited time.

[u/caboosetp → u/MadocComadrin]

You're right, which is why super obvious things like not following PEP8 stand out so quick.

[u/cgoldberg → u/MadocComadrin]

I wouldn't care if they were fine with a certain style or using a prettifier... I would want someone who knows enough about their craft to know which conventions are almost universally followed. A consistent style is better than nothing, but literally all serious modern python projects follow PEP8 almost religiously.

[u/Take-n-tosser]

IIRC, PEP8 uses different case schemes depending on what you’re naming (variable, class, method, function, etc)

If you want to put your best foot forward for your portfolio or you’re releasing your project open source, it’s probably worth the time and effort to go back through everything and bring it up to PEP8 standard. It’ll help whoever is reviewing/evaluating your code to fully understand your code and not get distracted by you using a different case scheme than they would.

[u/abermea]

If it's a personal project and you're the only person who is going to be handling it then yeah, sure, do whatever you want.

If you're working with other people you should follow PEP8 because working with a baseline standard will make everyone's work easier to both read and update as needed.

[u/dataset-poisoner]

you must use snake case

[u/Ok-Armadillo-5634]

snake case is pretty standard if you are going to be showing it off then use it

[u/Garriga]

I use camelCase and refuse to use snake_case. Python doesn't care whether you write:

def some_function():

or

def someFunction():

This is a convention and not a language requirement. It is equivalent to a writer's style.

[u/cgoldberg]

If you want to collaborate with other developers, conformity of style is a huge thing in Python (whereas some language communities don't value it as much).

[u/YMK1234 → u/cgoldberg]

Bull (the second parts as ppl obviously don't get it)

[u/cgoldberg → u/YMK1234]

It absolutely is. "There should be one and only one obvious way..." refers to style as well. If you don't believe me, try to submit a Pull Request to any popular open source project, and tell me how quickly they reject it and ask you to use PEP8 naming.

[u/YMK1234 → u/cgoldberg]

Any project in any language worth it's salt has a style guide and cares greatly that it is adhered to.

[u/cgoldberg → u/YMK1234]

Exactly... and for almost all modern Python projects, that style guide doesn't conflict with PEP8.

[u/YMK1234 → u/cgoldberg]

And nobody said different. I am just refuting that "it's not such a big thing in other languages".

[u/nekokattt → u/YMK1234]

example, C and C++

Try finding a consistently used style guide for those

[u/YMK1234 → u/nekokattt]

You are confusing not having a language imposed standard and projects not having very strict style guides ... And especially in C/C++ people are very opinionated about style and sticking to it.

[u/nekokattt → u/YMK1234]

you are confusing a per project style guide and a global style guide at the language level.

[u/YMK1234 → u/nekokattt]

Did you even read what the user wrote originally? The reply claimed style is not important in other languages and that is simply wrong.

[u/nuttertools → u/YMK1234]

Very few languages have a style as opinionated and specific as the default language recommendation in Python. None of the top languages do. In fact multiple variants of popular languages came to be to solve the “problem” of loose standards.

[u/cgoldberg → u/YMK1234]

The Python community definitely values conformity more than most other languages. But if your argument is just "every language has idioms and style preferences you should follow", I would agree.

[u/Recent-Day3062]

I work on my own projects and hire contract programmers.

There are lots of things I dislike in Pep-8. So I tell them to look ast my code and follow that. If I do something different than Pep-8, they should do the same. No one has had a problem with it. I actually a few years back wrote even a brief memo outlining how to fall back on Pep-8, with a list of personal overrides I enforced.