A decorator syntax not yet mentioned (I think!)

[Jeff Shannon]

Mark Bottjer wrote:

>
> FWIW, I don't object to the keyword, I object to the indented block. I 
> agree that newbies will need to look either up. My only real concern 
> is that certain suggested syntaxes (mostly the list or tuple forms) 
> look innocuous enough that newbies may not realize that they've hit 
> something new. Everything past there seems more and more like simple 
> preference.


The interesting thing here is that it seems that the reason you dislike 
the indented block is the reason given for preferring it by those people 
who *do* like it -- the fact that it *looks* like normal Python.

Frankly, if a new feature is so radically different from the rest of 
Python that it's deemed that it needs to *look* radically different from 
the rest of Python for it to be understood... that, to me, suggests that 
it's a feature that shouldn't exist in Python.  All the criticisms aimed 
at the decorate: syntax, ISTM, apply equally well to @pie syntax, except 
for the few that are based on indentation level.  And on those, *I* at 
least feel that it'd be preferable to pattern decorators after existing 
language constructs, rather than deliberately breaking all the patterns 
that Python has established.  I don't see the indented declarations as 
any harder to understand that nonindented, @tagged declarations, but I 
*do* see them as being much easier to read.  And I expect to read a lot 
of code, so having something visually jarring seems like setting myself 
up for a future full of low-grade anguish.

I see your point about it looking a bit odd that an indented block 
contain only declarative statements.  However, the @pie mess in front of 
function defs looks, to me, to be not just odd, but downright 
obfuscatory.  It's *much* harder for my eyes to pick out the def and 
thus the function name, and all I see is a function body dangling from a 
blob of @pies. 

Yes, this is personal preference, but it seems that it's a preference 
shared by many people -- isn't Python supposed to fit my brain, rather 
than forcing my brain into Python's shape?  The fact that one can get 
used to @pie-syntax doesn't mean it's intuitive.  The fact that the 
feature is new doesn't mean that we need an entire new code-layout 
principle.  The differences between class & def, on the one hand, and 
try/except & if/else on the other, don't seem to confuse people too 
much.  I'd rather see the same layout principle applied in a different 
way than see an unprecedented and unfamiliar layout principle used in 
one or two special cases.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International