decorator syntax polling suggestion

[Doug Holton]

Steven Bethard wrote:

> The poll, as stated, asked voters to vote for the syntax suggestion
> they liked the /most/.  Some of the conclusions people are trying to
> draw from it are what syntaxes people liked the /least/.  This is
> probably not the right conclusion to be drawing from the poll that was
> given.

What the poll found is that when given a choice between the current 
decorator syntax and two specific alternatives, people overwhelmingly 
choose the two alternatives.  So there are at least two specific 
alternative syntaxes out there (and of course probably more) that most 
people would prefer over the current one.

So it is reasonable to conclude that most people do not think the 
current decorator syntax is the best option.

Although that might seem obvious to some, that conclusion alone had not 
yet been clear based on mailing list traffic.

So if Guido does want to pay attention to the opinions of Python users 
(and he doesn't have to), then changing the current syntax probably 
wouldn't be an unpopular decision.  The question though, is what 
specific alternative syntax should it be?  There are at least two other 
popular syntaxes and very likely many more, but Guido asked for help in 
narrowing them down to one or two or three specific proposals so he 
could decide.

At the same time though, Guido has rejected all alternative syntaxes 
that have been presented, so the decorators will likely stay as is.  In 
the long long long term, decorators will be less important anyway, if we 
get features like optional static typing that Guido has expressed 
support for (no need for accepts and requires decorators), anonymous 
code blocks, etc.