[Python-Dev] Re: decorators and 2.4

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 05:53 PM 6/25/04 -0500, Contempt for Meatheads wrote:
>IMHO, making decorators functions is a bad idea.  Decorators are metadata 
>about the function to which they refer.  Using the same syntax for 
>decorators as for functions conceptually weakens this distinction and 
>encourages misuse of decorators, even to the point of potentially 
>encouraging (or implying) side-effects as a result of decoration.

Side-effects are desired by various current users of decorators, so whether 
this will "encourage" them is moot.  Further, those uses often suggest that 
"metadata" is far too narrow of a word to encompass the desired uses of 
decorators.

Last, keep in mind that there is nothing stopping people today from doing 
whatever they want with functions *anyway*, in every version of Python I've 
ever used (back to 1.4):

    def foo(...):
        ...

    do_something_with(foo)

So, again, the idea that this somehow becomes a bad thing when it goes at 
the top of the function definition  -- where it should be more visible to 
the reader that it's taking place -- seems a bit odd to me.