The Art of Python Decorators: Junior, Senior, and Expert Insights

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Python decorators are a powerful and often misunderstood feature of the language. They allow you to modify or enhance the behavior of functions or methods without changing their source code. In this article, we’ll dive into the world of Python decorators and provide insights from junior, senior, and expert perspectives, complete with code snippets and explanations.

Junior Insight: Understanding the Basics

Junior developers are just getting started with Python, and decorators might seem intimidating at first. Let’s break it down with a simple example:

def my_decorator(func):
    def wrapper():
        print("Something is happening before the function is called.")
        func()
        print("Something is happening after the function is called.")
    return wrapper

@my_decorator
def say_hello():
    print("Hello!")
say_hello()

In this example, my_decorator is a simple decorator that wraps the say_hello function. It adds behavior before and after calling the original function. When we call say_hello(), we get the following output:

Something is happening before the function is called.
Hello!
Something is happening after the function is called.