Pascal vs Snake Case

Q&A
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#1

Current Course: https://app.dataquest.io/m/352/object-oriented-python/3/defining-a-class

I was going through the above lesson and learned about case conventions.

I saw that snake(this_that) is used for variables and functions. I realized that at least DataQuest was using this way to name things, I just didn’t realize it was actually called something.

Whenever I code outside of the normal python answer checking screen I pretty much just always capitalized the first letter of each word(Pascal) instead of using underscores because for me, it is faster for me to type that way.
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Would that become an issue later in terms of working with teams etc?

Should I keep towards the traditional conventions like using Snake Case for variables and using Pascal for classes? Or is it okay for me to just name everything using Pascal?

#2

It might. Most teams have a style convention that you’ll need to adhere to, and it’s likely that regular variable names will be in snake case since that’s a wide-reaching convention in Python.

There might be a better reason to get into the habit of snake case, though. I feel like if I look at Python code and someone is using unusual capitalization conventions, I have some sort of inner bias that makes me think that the person is not a particularly experienced Python programmer.

I can’t be sure that other people feel the same way, but from the perspective of working towards getting a job (on the assumption that you are), it might be worth making the change earlier rather than later so your work looks more professional.

2 Likes
#3

Okay, sounds good! Thanks :smiley: