[Python-Dev] Strawman decision: @decorator won't change

[Paul McGuire]

"Arthur" <ajsiegel at optonline.com> wrote in message
news:15mlk0d63duukvnqtsrb4eguuldqd6ub2g at 4ax.com...
<snip>
> And were it opened for debate you would run into bizarre arguments in
> its defense.  Like mine.
>
Well, it *is* opened for debate, so knock yourself out.  The more bizarre
the better, I'd say.

> That there a mechanism in Python described by a arbitrary word,
> "decorator" and provoked by an  arbitrary symbol '@'
>
> The symbol *works*,  as a sore thumb and a tacit admission of
> something,
>
Why do STOP signs say STOP?  Why not put an arbitrary @ sign on them, and
tell everyone it means STOP?

Your argument is equally valid for *any* symbol.  Why choose this ugly blot?
This arbitrary symbology is the way of Perl and APL.  I thought one of the
beauties of Python was that it doesn't impose this kind of obtusity on the
developer or maintainer.

> It is defended in this view by its anti-esthetic.
>
Are you a Dada-ist?  Is Python becoming the Dada language?
(http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/dada.htm)

> Having to put up with this kind of argument in its defense is perhaps
> a good reason to not re-open the discussion.
>
This sounds like another way of saying "this is a silly argument, and we
would be better off without it."  The point is, just about *all* the
arguments for this symbol or that will from here on *be* silly arguments.

-- Paul
''Suppose someone were to  assert: The gostak distims the  doshes. You do
    not know  what this means;  nor do I.  But if  we assume that  it is
    English, we know  that 'the doshes are distimmed by  the gostak'. We
    know too that  'one distimmer of doshes is a  gostak' . If moreover,
    the 'doshes are galloons', we know that 'some galloons are distimmed
    by the gostak'. And so we may go on, and *so we often do go on.*''
>From "The Meaning of Meaning" by C.K.Ogden and I.A. Richards