# Why decorators matter

## Objectives

This section introduces the decorator pattern in context by motivating it from first principles.
You will build foundational understanding of functional patterns, higher-order functions, and closures, setting the stage for decorators later.

## Pre-requisites

For this section, it's assumed you're already comfortable with some “basic” Python concepts, namely:

 - functions (definition and usage)
 - control flow (conditional statements and loops)
 - variables

No knowledge of decorators is required or assumed.