remaining decorator syntax options

[Grzegorz Dostatni]

Keyword. Definitely keyword.

One of the great stong points of python (for me at least) is that it uses 
next to no special symbols. Now, I could go on and say how ugly I find 
code that uses these kinds of symbols. I've been doing python programming 
for about 5 years. I've done ruby for the last two years and I still find 
those @, @@ and $ to be both ugly and annoying to write. Whenever I am 
forced to include a special symbol, I pretty much stop and rever to 
"hunting and pecking".

By comparison, writing python code is not much more difficult than writing 
english text. (Although it requires far more concentration). Besides, 
typing speed is not an issue in programming. Saving 4 keystrokes by going 
@foo instead of self.foo is not going to make a difference. What makes 
python a rapid development language is documentation, powerful base data 
types and the ability to read other people's code. Most of the time ;-)

At the end of the day, I would look for precedents:

Python:		c/c++		Ruby
and			&		and
or			|		or
self.foo				@foo
global				$foo

I am aware of the symbols python uses (#, %, **, &, |). With the exception 
of #, I generally find a way to avoid them.

Greg



On 10 Aug 2004 12:33:36 -0700, Steven Bethard <steven.bethard at gmail.com> 
wrote:

> So I'd suggest that we put all our effort into the indicator
> discussions.  If you have a good argument for why a keyword is better
> than a symbol, or why a symbol is better than a keyword, please voice
> them now.  And remember that 'because it's prettier' or 'because it's
> uglier' are not aguments GvR will consider.  We need strong arguments,
> that argue on the basis of readability or learnability or
> maintainability, etc.