List some possible reasons why arriving at consensus about decorators has

been so hard (or impossible) to acheive.  There are certainly more.  Are
these the killers?

pep-0318.txt

@@ -78,6 +78,41 @@ modifications to classes.  For Python 2.4, only function/method
 decorators are being added.
 
 
+Why Is This So Hard?
+--------------------
+
+A couple decorators (``classmethod()`` and ``staticmethod()``) have
+been available in Python since version 2.2.  It's been assumed since
+approximately that time that some syntactic support for them would
+eventually be added to the language.  Given this assumption, one might
+wonder why it's been so difficult to arrive at a consensus.
+Discussions have raged off-and-on at times in both comp.lang.python
+and the python-dev mailing list about how best to implement function
+decorators.  There is no one clear reason why this should be so, but a
+few problems seem to be most problematic.
+
+* Disagreement about where the "declaration of intent" belongs.
+  Almost everyone agrees that decorating/transforming a function at
+  the end of its definition is suboptimal.  Beyond that there seems to
+  be no clear consensus where to place this information.
+
+* Syntactic constraints.  Python is a syntactically simple language
+  with fairly strong constraints on what can and can't be done without
+  "messing things up" (both visually and with regards to the language
+  parser).  There's no obvious way to structure this information so
+  that people new to the concept will think, "Oh yeah, I know what
+  you're doing."  The best that seems possible is to keep new users
+  from creating a wildly incorrect mental model of what the syntax
+  means.
+
+* Overall unfamiliarity with the concept.  For people who have a
+  passing acquaintance with algebra (or even basic arithmetic) or have
+  used at least one other programming language, much of Python is
+  intuitive.  Very few people will have had any experience with the
+  decorator concept before encountering it in Python.  There's just no
+  strong preexisting meme that captures the concept.
+
+
 Background
 ==========