[Tutor] Writing decorators?

[Ben Finney]

Michael Welle <mwe012008 at gmx.net> writes:

> so 'the function has changed' really means 'the reference has
> changed'? Strange.

Humans think in strage ways :-)

Really, though, it shouldn't be too surprising. The *perception* is that
the reference (a name, or an index in a sequence, or whatever) remains
unchanged; at least, you still address the reference exactly the same
way. ‘foo’ in the code remains ‘foo’.

But what you get from that reference is different. So, because what I
get when I refer to ‘foo’ is different after some operation than what
it was prior to that operation, it is natural to speak loosely about
“this operation has changed foo”.

> If you hear 'function foo', do you think of the reference 'foo' or do
> you think of the referenced thing, the function object? It might be
> context dependent, but usually I think about the latter.

It is normal for us to think of them as one, because in Python the
*only* way to get an object is through some specific reference. Our
natural language doesn't easily handle the separable but linked
concepts.

> But it might just be a language problem.

Which is another way of saying thta it's a human thinking problem. Try
not to have overly strict expectations of how people think about it,
while also striving to express ourselves precisely.

-- 
 \              “Dvorak users of the world flgkd!” —Kirsten Chevalier, |
  `\                                                rec.humor.oracle.d |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney