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

Greg Ewing greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Mon Apr 5 02:01:04 EDT 2004

"Phillip J. Eby" <pje at telecommunity.com>:

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.

Your tastes must be different from mine, then, because it doesn't strike me as any prettier visually, either.

I don't think I can fully separate these different kinds of aesthetics in my mind, anyway. To me, a piece of syntax isn't just something to look at -- it has a grammar, and it has a meaning, and if the grammar and the meaning and the way it looks on the page don't all agree with each other, it strikes a discordant note.

When I read the syntax

def foo(args) [classmethod]: ...

it says to me "Define a function foo, with these args, and which happens to be a classmethod. Here's the body..."

On the other hand, when I see

[classmethod] def foo(args): ...

the little voice in my head doesn't really say anything coherent at all.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+

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