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

Phillip J. Eby pje at telecommunity.com
Sun Apr 4 23:39:49 EDT 2004

At 01:23 PM 4/5/04 +1200, Greg Ewing wrote:

Ka-Ping Yee <python-dev at zesty.ca>:

> Putting the [decorator] on a separate line before the function > changes the stakes entirely. It sets aside real functional issues > in favour of aesthetics. Not only that, but I think the aesthetics of this version are worse than anything that's been considered before. It strikes me as deeply wrong and un-Pythonic -- so much so that I can't understand why Guido is even considering it.

There are different kinds of aesthetics. Guido's proposal has grown on me from a visual aesthetics point of view. After I worked with it a little bit, I realized it really is much prettier than decorators-before-colon.

However, from more intellectual aesthetics (consistency, predictability, etc.) I still dislike it, and don't really see how to sanely reconcile it with the Python syntax of today. I wish that I did, because it really does look better for simple decorators.

On the other hand, no syntax proposed so far has been really that nice to look at when used for multiple decorators.

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