Python Notes

1. Naming conventions

Python mostly uses snake_case: all lowercase, words joined by underscores. The official style guide is PEP 8 (Python Enhancement Proposal 8).

What	Convention	Example
File (module) names	lowercase_with_underscores	`vector_search.py`
Package (folder) names	short, lowercase, ideally no underscores	`ragtools`
Variables	snake_case	`top_k = 5`
Functions	snake_case	`def embed_text():`
Classes	PascalCase (also called CapWords)	`class VectorStore:`
Constants	UPPER_SNAKE_CASE	`MAX_RESULTS = 10`
Internal ("private") names	leading underscore	`_cache`

Coming from Java: variables and methods are user_name, not userName. Classes look the same as in Java (VectorStore).

Pitfalls

Don't name your file after a library you use, like pinecone.py or json.py. Python will import your file instead of the real library.
Don't shadow built-in names: avoid list, dict, str, id as variable names.
Avoid single letters l, O, I; they look like 1 and 0.