Coding Standards: Naming conventions for abbreviated camel-case

[aduth]

How should we capitalize abbreviations and acronyms? This is an area where Core JavaScript Coding Standards are not prescriptive (but perhaps should be).

For example, in assigning a user ID variable, which is preferable:

• userId
• userID

The language / DOM are not especially consistent here:

• decodeURI
• getElementById
• XMLHttpRequest 😱

There was a similar discussion in developing adapted standards in Calypso, resulting in camel-case covering abbreviations and acronyms:

https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/master/docs/coding-guidelines/javascript.md#naming-conventions

The reasoning being: It simplified the documentation and thought-process to recommend camelCase for everything, including abbreviations and acronyms.

In retrospect, the language itself is quite consistent on upper-cased abbreviations and acronyms (getElementById and XMLHttpRequest are browser-specific additions). Anecdotally, other libraries tend toward the same, e.g. ReactDOM, TinyMCE. I've started to adopt this in my Gutenberg work (withAPIData), but I feel we should formalize one way or the other, and update inconsistencies (withInstanceId).

Yes, this is a bikeshed.

[mtias]

Going to close this :)

[aduth]

Effectively closed by #7670.