Renaming Python Names for JavaScript

Renaming Python Names for JavaScript

In this lesson, you gave the release note’s names their JavaScript spelling, and saw why: JavaScript runs Python’s names, but its readers expect their own.

• A line-by-line port that keeps every Python name runs and prints the same header as Python. Underscores are allowed in JavaScript names, as the settings show. JavaScript doesn’t check a name’s style; whoever reads the file next does, and to them snake_case reads as Python in JavaScript syntax.
• For variables and functions, JavaScript uses camelCase where Python uses snake_case: the first word lowercase, and each word after it capitalized. open_bugs becomes openBugs, and print_header becomes printHeader, where it’s declared and where it’s called.
• Classes, when you meet them, use PascalCase, like Python’s CapWords, and a JavaScript name can hold a dollar sign, which you’ll see in library names but shouldn’t use for your own variables.
• The six settings keep their capitals: many projects write top-level settings that someone edits in UPPER_SNAKE_CASE. Python enforces nothing, so there the capitals are the only signal not to change a value.
• In JavaScript, const stops a name from being reassigned, so openBugs is a const too, in camelCase. The capitals only mark the settings, the values someone edits before a run.
• In JavaScript, default is a reserved word, kept for the language’s own syntax, as Python keeps if and class. delete, also ordinary in Python, is another. Using one as a name stops the file with a SyntaxError, so the port names the client’s channel defaultChannel.
• JavaScript doesn’t mind underscores in a file name, but many projects use kebab-case, lowercase words joined by hyphens: release_note.py becomes release-note.js.

Here’s the top of the Python script, with the header’s channel lines:

CLIENT = "Fernleaf Bakery"
VERSION = "2.4.1"
DEPLOYED_BY = "Maya"
BUGS_OPENED = 9
BUGS_CLOSED = 7
CODE_FREEZE = True

open_bugs = BUGS_OPENED - BUGS_CLOSED

def print_header():
    print(f"Release {VERSION} for {CLIENT}")
    print(f"Open bugs: {open_bugs}")
    default = "#fernleaf-bakery"
    print(f"Channel: {default}")

print_header()