Extending Python Syntax with @

[Roger Binns]

DH wrote:
>    - pychecker bundled with python, since it catches so many errors
>        beginners and non-beginners make.

I would LOVE to see that, or even a special "checking" mode for the
interpretter even if it ran ten times slower.  Pychecker has been
become increasingly useless to me.  Part of that is due to bugs
(SF #844960, #708546), part due it being incomplete, and part
due to wxWidgets defining every function as (*args, **kwargs)
and indirecting through a layer of Swig.  I get a huge list
of false positives.

>    - make colons optional after function and class declarations.  People
>        forget to type them anyway.

I don't agree with that.  With the current scheme, it is trivial for
editors to auto-indent.  They just have to do so after any line
ending in a colon, with no exceptions to that rule.

The case suggestion makes things appear better in the short term,
but do lots more harm in the long term, making maintenance and
performance significantly harder.  If you would like to understand
some of the issues, I would recommend writing a translator between
the "relaxed" Python you describe and the standard Python.

Roger