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[Python-Dev] Re: Decorators: vertical bar syntax

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Mon Aug 9 22:17:46 CEST 2004 
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > Let's make one thing clear; while decorators may be useful for
> > some to experiment with attaching signatures to methods,
> > mainstream Python will eventually have optional static typing
> > built in, and it won't use
> 
> I am immensely happy to hear this.  I have read your old essay on
> the topic, but the long silence on this issue had me wondering
> whether it had been completely abandoned.  I can't currently
> contribute to it, so I don't complain.  But this is great news.
> Would you care to venture even a rough guess for when this might
> happen (and no, I'm not a lawyer, so you don't need a disclaimer in
> front :)?

Probably not before Python 3000, which is awaiting my retirement (or
at least a sabbatical year), unless the community revisits the issue
and comes up with a solid design that I can agree with.  My retirement
or sabbatical is at least a few years off... :-(

> From a scientific computing viewpoint, this is probably the single
> biggest stumbling point when using python today.  We have
> scipy.weave, f2py and even manually written extension modules, which
> we all know how to use.  But having optional static typing for the
> cases where python's dynamic nature is a cost with no benefit will
> be an incredible gain.  Other methods always slow down the otherwise
> very fluid feel of using python, so having this as part of the
> language will be fantastic.

I'm afraid that if you want something *now* in order to interface to
3rd party tools, an interim solution using decorators may be your best
bet for the next few years (assuming Python 2.4 has some form of
decorators).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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