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

[Greg Ewing]

I think most of the worry about long, complicated
decorator lists with baroque parameters is FUD.
What are the realistic use cases for such things?
I don't remember seeing any proposed.

The ones I have seen proposed (e.g. PyObjC) use
only one or two decorators at a time, and if there
are any parameters, they're not lengthly.

Furthermore, if in some circumstance someone finds
themselves writing decorator lists so long that they
become unreadable, well, there are ways of dealing
with that. For example,

foo_decorators = decorator_list(
  # Big long-winded
  # list of
  # decorators
)

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

which is not much different from Guido's preceding-list
version, with the advantage that it's explicit about
the fact that you need to look above to get the full
picture.

Please let's not allow unfounded speculation to get
in the way of coming up with a nice syntax that works
well in the majority of cases we expect to actually
see.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+
University of Canterbury,	   | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a	  |
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greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz	   +--------------------------------------+