[Python-Dev] Re: def fn (args) [dec,dec]: (original) (raw)

Jeremy Hylton jhylton at gmail.com
Fri Aug 6 16:52:15 CEST 2004

On Fri, 06 Aug 2004 07:45:51 -0700, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

[Anthony] > I'm having trouble finding a single piece from you where you > outline the problems you have with the [decorators] after args, > before :. Could you possibly post a message to python-dev > stating your problems with it? It's the major one I've been > unable to find your objections to.

And nobody else has expressed their objections to it either? :-)

I thought it was obvious that this option was not acceptable.

(If I could design a language from scratch, I might want to move docstrings to before the 'def' as well; I've come to appreciate this in Java code. Fredrik Lundh's PythonDoc also uses comments prefixing the method definition; he also uses @ so he should be happy with this syntax, as he seemed to be when I mentioned it to him at EuroPython.)

It's not at all clear that Fredrik likes it, but he doesn't participate in Python development any more so we may never know :-(.

From his blog:

...so someone I've never heard of added a major syntactic feature to Python 2.4, using a syntax that Guido doesn't really like. sorry, guys, but I liked Python better when the core language was controlled by a single designer with a strong intuition. the current design-by-arguing-until-nobody-cares-anymore-committee just don't understand what made Python's design so damn good (as the "[new syntax] is no worse than [existing operator] meaning [something when used with a given type]" comment clearly shows). sigh. good thing nobody can force me to use decorators (or update to 2.4, for that matter). time to finish my own interpreter, perhaps. or at least start using a fresh one.

Jeremy

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