[Python-Dev] PEP 318: Let's not give in to FUD (original) (raw)

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Fri Apr 2 08:24:43 EST 2004

On Thu, 2004-04-01 at 23:28, Jeremy Hylton wrote:

On Thu, 2004-04-01 at 22:34, Greg Ewing wrote: > Another thought about: > > [decorator] > def foo(args): > ... > > What are newcomers going to make of this? > > It looks like a thrown-away list followed by a def, and > there's no clue that there's any connection between the > two.

I think it's obvious that there's a connection between the two. A bare list by itself would be nonsense and the actual list would probably say something like [classmethod] which suggests it's saying something about a method.

It may be nonsense, but it means something today. So it can't be obvious that they're connected because today, they aren't.

If tomorrow this same code means something different, users looking at the code will have to know what version of Python they're using, and make sure it's the right one ("uh, how do I do that?"). If they were to use decorator-before-def code in an older version of Python, the program would be accepted but silently do the wrong thing.

At least with decorator-before-colon trying to run the code in older interpreters will barf loudly.

-Barry

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