Jeff Bone:

Yet --- true, but only if one accepts a particular and rather simple-minded and overly-literal interpretation of the ***GOALS*** of PEP 318,

That simple-minded and overly-literal interpretation may well be correct. PEP 318 does not intend to change the semantics or capabilities of the language in any way whatsoever. The only reason to add 318 is so that a particular idiom will be easier to understand (and perhaps more efficient). The other goals are really damage control. If the idiom becomes easy to use, it will get used more often. Sometimes, that will be good, as it will replace something more byzantine. It is true that we don't want to encourage certain types of coding, but they're already possible, and the consensus was not to ban them now. Discourage in a style guide, maybe, but not ban. The arguments about syntax are because we don't want the new and improved idiom to end up uglifying the rest of the language. Ideally, any change will remove more clutter than it creates, so adding new meaning to certain magic characters ... is risky. If we put restrictions on decorators, people may just keep using the current idiom -- and then we would have added the clutter for no gain at all. -jJ