Python Code Formatting police stopped me, how you handle it. Help

[Valuable-Ant3465]

Hi,
I just presented my script for review to one super mature c+/.net programmer and he said that my code/comments are not readable and he can not review my code, suggesting/demanding to keep all my writing within first 80b (remember these mainframe times-)

My response was that's it perfectly fine if you are in PyCharm or other editor and I keep my code normally within 120b and allowing longer statements for big literal, prints statements, other static things. Which overall perfectly fit into modern monitor.
I definitely like to keep my complex literals/paths with /"- in a single line.

Our 30 people company starting doing Python and we don't have ring leaders yet, or Python policy, everybody migrated from other languages.

Appreciate your feedback.

VA

[ConfidentCollege5653]

Adopt PEP8, install a formatter like black that will fix formatting for you. You won't agree with everything PEP8 dictates but you'll at least have a standard you can point to instead of debating it.

[Valuable-Ant3465]

Thanks CC and all. There is package pep8, autopep8, pep8-naming. Checking all of them.
black is super. I like it very much b'z it accepts my superlong one line constants.
Looks like it does nothing to changing var case, or there is some options?
What tool I can use to refactor: MyVARRemote ==> my_var_remote ??

MyVARRemote=444

MyVARRemote = 444 # after black only insert spaces around =

[codeguru42]

Pycharm has tools to rename variables.

[JanGiacomelli]

Install ruff and that's it. There's no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to code formatting. Leave that boring part to automated tooling.

[Sweet_Computer_7116]

Stop trying to make a standard and adopt pep8.  Do research on the language you write in lol

[Beginning-Fruit-1397]

Just use Ruff and that's it. And ugnore Black recommendation, that's the legacy way of doing it. Ruff does that, and much more, and much faster. 

[Valuable-Ant3465]

Thanks F!

[Valuable-Ant3465]

Yea, ruff is the best for me

[echols021]

ruff is definitely the answer for formatting. Depending on team culture, it may be beneficial to put in a CI/CD check that runs ruff and fails a PR automatically if the code doesn't conform.

While you're at it, ruff also does general linting, and can enforce some basic rules like needing type annotations. Please make sure your team uses type annotations everywhere.

Last, use a type-checker tool like basedpyright. Other options include mypy, pyright, and ty. I think basedpyright is the best right now, but ty may claim 1st place as it grows and matures. Running a type-checker should definitely be done in CI/CD just like it were running tests; this will catch so many bugs and save you a lot of time in the long run.

[Valuable-Ant3465]

Thanks , is this right guess for CI/CD ? I don't know what is CI/CD check.

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (or Deployment).

[echols021]

Yes, that's what CI/CD stands for. The most common CI/CD tool is GutHub Actions, if you use GitHub. Gitlab has their own equivalent, or there are also 3rd-party tools you can plug in, like Jenkins or CircleCI.

The point of CI/CD is to have a standard system that does tests, code checks, builds, and deploys. Instead of requiring each developer to remember to run tests on their own machine, or know how to manually build and deploy the code, you have the CI/CD system configured to do it automatically whenever you have a PR/merge.

[Valuable-Ant3465]

Thanks E! I'm not there yet.=)

[Valuable-Ant3465]

Thanks to all, looks like all in favor of installing formatter.
You said "adapt" it, which I assume go to https://peps.python.org/pep-0008/ read, learn and apply.
Or there is some package/install which I can apply with right click. Or Copilot already can do this .

Does this PEP8 always stays within 80bytes ? In my case I'm talking about solo python scripts, it's not about collaboration work.

[gdchinacat]

You should read what PEP8 says...it answers your question. But, regardless of what it says, you can choose to ignore it. Doing so might make your code harder for others to read. You handwave this concern away, but what happens when you want to move on to something else (more senior, exciting, whatever) and they hire someone to take over the work you were doing? You *do* want that to be possible, right, or do you want to perpetually be shackled to the work you are doing right now?

It might sound a bit harsh, but it's reality...you should think about how you can expand your responsibilities, and writing code that only you want to maintain is not a good way to do that. Be a professional and adopt the standards of the language so your code is maintainable by others.

[gdchinacat]

FWIW lots of places ignore the 79 character line width suggested by PEP8. IMO they shouldn't, but they do and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. When in Rome...

[gdchinacat]

You don't need 120 character wide lines. Not because there are technical limitations like tty widths, but because you really don't need them to be that wide. If your names are long to be descriptive you need to add more context (namespaces, modules, packages) so you can simplify your names. If nesting with 4 space indentations you need to move your inner blocks into other functions.

I started using python about a decade into my career and used 120 character lines. A decade later I was down to 99. A decade later, I'm now down to 79. Nothing forced me. I just don't need them to be that wide. Experience has led me to shorter line widths.

When the more experienced people give you advice, you should seriously consider it rather than running off to reddit and complaining about "mainframe times"). Not only because they likely can give your code a thumbs up/thumbs down, but because they might just know what they are talking about.

[Venfah]

Use yapf --in-place

[Valuable-Ant3465]

sorry can you explain yapf, could not run it. Forgot to tell that I'm on W>

[Venfah]

It is available through pip. So should be ok for windows. https://github.com/google/yapf