[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 318: Decorators last before colon
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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