Ok, perhaps I jest. As a Python instructor, understanding decorators is a topic I find students consistently struggle with upon first exposure. That’s because decorators are hard to understand! Getting decorators requires understanding several functional programming concepts as well as feeling comfortable with some unique features of Python’s function definition and function calling syntax. _Using_ decorators is easy (see Section 10)! But writing them can be complicated.
I can’t make decorators easy - but maybe by walking through each piece of the puzzle one step at a time I can help you feel more confident in understanding decorators[1]. Because decorators are complex this is going to be a long article - but stick with it! I promise to make each piece as simple as possible - and if you understand each piece, you’ll understand how decorators work! I’m trying to assume minimal Python knowledge but this will probably be most helpful to people who have at least a casual working exposure to Python.
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