Alternative decorator syntax - POLL RESULTS SO FAR - ARE WE DONE?

[Paul McGuire]

Well, after 3 days of open polling, the number of additional votes have
dropped off pretty dramatically.  Here are the results so far:

Total voters: 55 (with 3 votes each)
Votes for each choice or group of choices:
Any J 81
J2 78
Any C 40
C1 29
Any D 9
C2 8
D2 6
F 6
L 5
Any E 5
A1 4
H 4
K 4
Any A 4
B 3
D1 3
E1 3
C3 2
I 2
J1 2
C4 1
E2 1
E4 1
J3 1
M 1
A2 0
E3 0
G 0
J4 0

This would put J2 and C1 as the clear favorites among those who voted, with
J2 between 2:1 and 3:1 more strongly favored.  Of all of the votes cast, J2
received 48%, C1 received 18%.  No other option received more than 10% of
any votes.

However, the multivote format gives us some additional information, over
conventional "one-person-one-vote" format.  Of the 55 voters, 75% cast at
least one vote for J2, while only 35% cast one or more votes for C1.  From
the standpoint of building concensus, I find this statistic more compelling
than the raw vote count.  It tells me that 3/4 of the voting sample are at
least open to the option presented by J2, so that developing community
acceptance is more likely to happen more quickly with J2 than with C1.

I believe that Anthony Baxter's read of Guido's intentions on what happens
next are fairly accurate (Anthony has been very active on python-dev and in
private e-mails on this subject, and I'm sure his view is more than most of
us here on c.l.py) - I think Guido has challenged us to rally around *one*
alternative to the current @ syntax, and from this poll, I think J2 is our
collective best bet.  I do *not* think that Guido plans to have a run-off
between the chosen alternative and the @ syntax, nor that he would give much
credence to one if it were held - remember what the D in BDFL stands for.
But I think he *will* be pleased that among the babel of syntax proposals
that have been put forward, this fairly unstructured and unorganized group
will have come to closure and met his challenge, and settled on *one*
alternative option.  I believe that Robert Brewer's technical discussion and
Michael Sparks' implementation will at least cause him to seriously consider
our concensus choice as a viable alternative to the @ syntax.

I'm sure that there are many asking if 55 is a sufficient sample for
determining the wishes of the Python community.  I have no response other
than to say that this poll was posted on an open Usenet forum, and that it
quickly gathered a breadth of responses (despite the fact that many people
are just tired of talking and reading about decorators), and that the
response rate noe looks to be dropping off.  I am skeptical that additional
time will significantly change the results.  And I'm not sure what other
measures to take to obtain further responses.  If there are other forums for
eliciting these inputs, I would have hoped that those who follow c.l.py
would have already contacted them for their participation.

So I would like to propose that we collectively move forward with J2 as our
selected alternative.  I would say that those who proposed other
alternatives are not "the losers" in this, that they put valued thought and
discussion into this overall topic.  In fact, the J2 proposal evolved over
the past several months, and I believe this is in part due to the influence
of concepts put forth in other proposals.  I believe that both C1 and J2 are
clear, Pythonic, and pleasing to the eye, but in the interests of moving
forward, we need to focus our efforts in a single direction from here on.
If we continue to promote our other various favorites, I think it's fairly
certain that we will all be typing @ characters after release 2.4 comes out.

Please start giving some thought to what the 'decorate' keyword should be.
If we can get/keep this selection to a manageable list, then we should have
another multivote some time next week.

-- Paul