Understanding Python Decorators

Decorators are one of Python's most powerful features. They let you modify or extend the behavior of functions and classes without changing their source code.

A decorator is simply a function that takes another function as an argument and returns a new function. The @syntax is syntactic sugar for this pattern.

Common use cases for decorators:

- Logging and timing function calls
- Authentication and permission checks
- Caching and memoization
- Input validation
- Rate limiting

Django uses decorators extensively: @login_required, @permission_required, @csrf_exempt, and @cached_property are all decorators you'll encounter regularly.