[Python] Python alignment of assignments (style) [closed]

I really like following style standards, as those specified in PEP 8. I have a linter that checks it automatically, and definitely my code is much better because of that.

There is just one point in PEP 8, the E251 & E221 don't feel very good. Coming from a JavaScript background, I used to align the variable assignments as following:

var var1 = 1234;
var2 = 54;
longer_name = 'hi';

var lol = {
'that' : 65,
'those' : 87,
'other_thing' : true
};


And in my humble opinion, this improves readability dramatically. Problem is, this is dis-recommended by PEP 8. With dictionaries, is not that bad because spaces are allowed after the colon:

dictionary = {
'something': 98,
'some_other_thing': False
}


I can "live" with variable assignments without alignment, but what I don't like at all is not to be able to pass named arguments in a function call, like this:

some_func(length= 40,
weight= 900,
lol= 'troll',
useless_var= True,
intelligence=None)


So, what I end up doing is using a dictionary, as following:

specs = {
'length': 40,
'weight': 900,
'lol': 'troll',
'useless_var': True,
'intelligence': None
}

some_func(**specs)


or just simply

some_func(**{'length': 40,
'weight': 900,
'lol': 'troll',
'useless_var': True,
'intelligence': None})


But I have the feeling this work around is just worse than ignoring the PEP 8 E251 / E221.

What is the best practice?

EDIT many years later

Don't align. Sooner or later a new variable that is longer will come and your will have to hit spacebar here and there for a while until everything looks good again. Not worth it.

EDIT even more years later Just use a code formatter like black and use it as pre-commit and/or your CI. Then forget about this.

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