[Python-Dev] Call for defense of @decorators

[Gustavo Niemeyer]

Hello Ronald,

> I'm in favor of @decorators. It's easy to notice them when the are 
> present and they are clearly special. The '[decorator] def ...' and 

Why are they special? Why should they be more important than any other
part of the function definition?

> 'decorate(decorator) def ...' are very magic, and are IMHO unfriendly 
> to newbies (you must metion them in any introduction to python, because 
> otherwise users would complety mis the signicance of the decorations).
[...]
> 	@objc.signature("v@:@i")
> 	def saveSheetDidDismiss_returnCode_contextInfo_(self, sheet, 
> returnCode, contextInfo):
> 		pass
> 
> The argument to objc.signature is fairly magic and I do try to abstract 
> it away (such as with the introduction of objc.accessor), but that's 
> not always possible. If decorators were not allowed to have arguments 
> I'd have to introduce temporary functions that wouldn't help in 
> readability.

Is special syntax in the language really required in this case,
considering you're already doing something "fairly magic" anyways?

What is objc.signature() doing?

> The generic example PJE is introducing in PEAK also seem a good usecase 
> for decorators with arguments.

Any pointers?

I'd really like to "see the light" of complex decorators, as oposed
to KISS, and use the current language features to implement that.

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer
http://niemeyer.net