[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 318: Decorators last before colon (original) (raw)

Michel Pelletier michel at dialnetwork.com
Wed Mar 31 16:09:11 EST 2004

On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 12:04, Bob Ippolito wrote:

On Mar 31, 2004, at 1:59 PM, Michel Pelletier wrote:

>> Message: 1 >> Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 18:10:23 +0200 >> From: Simon Percivall <s.percivall at chello.se> >> Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP 318: Decorators last before colon > > I've been following this discussion closely and I would like to voice > my > opinion. > > Please don't add any decorator syntax to Python, at least not yet. All > of the proposals I have seen so far are, to be blunt, and in my opinion > of course, ugly and are getting uglier as the discussion ensues. > > I see nothing wrong, at least for the present, with the status quo > decorators that follow a function or class definition. They are > explicit, functionally equivalent, use the existing and completely > understandable syntax, and are so rarely used by only the most > experienced and advanced programmers that violating the beauty of the > language is unjustified. I've been pretty quiet about this lately because the discussions have gone into space, largely by people who don't even have a need or desire for decorators, but uninformed comments like this just irk me.

Well like the post says, it's just my opinion.

Decorators are not rare and are used by regular programmers in some problem domains. Yes, it takes an advanced programmer to write such a framework, but that doesn't mean that the syntax is useless to non-advanced programmers.

I didn't say useless, I said rarely used. I wouldn't imagine anyone here discussing syntax that was useless.

Please understand that just because you haven't need them yet doesn't make them worthless, ugly, etc.

I didn't say worthless either.

It has nothing to do with being an experienced or advanced programmer, some problem domains simply REQUIRE decorated functions in order to work at all.

I disagree, but I agree that there exist problem domains for which decorators would make it easier. Are satisfying these problem domains worth new syntax?

-Michel

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