Improve docstring and type annotation of as_cached

[MarcSkovMadsen]

I'm trying to help a user on discourse. I wanted to use as_cached for the first time.

Its just much faster (for me) to look at an example before I study the more systematic documentation. So I added an example.

I added a better type annotation than return type None as described here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62153257/specify-type-annotation-for-python-function-returning-type-of-argument

Comments

• Why did you pick the name as_cached. Its not a term I know from elsewhere. It does not give me associations to anything I already know and love which would have been helpful 😄 .

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Merging #3729 (5fd0d94) into master (7a4c221) will decrease coverage by 0.00%.
The diff coverage is 50.00%.

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##           master    #3729      +/-   ##
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- Coverage   83.76%   83.76%   -0.01%     
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  Files         210      210              
  Lines       30202    30203       +1     
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  Hits        25300    25300              
- Misses       4902     4903       +1     

Flag	Coverage Δ
ui-tests	33.23% <50.00%> (-0.01%)	⬇️
unitexamples-tests	77.08% <50.00%> (-0.01%)	⬇️

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Impacted Files	Coverage Δ
panel/io/state.py	68.11% <50.00%> (-0.15%)	⬇️

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[MarcSkovMadsen]

I looked at the failing tests. They don't seem related to this PR as far as I can see.

[maximlt]

Thanks Marc!

In particular on the typing improvement, TIL!

I made a suggestion to improve the example.

Why did you pick the name as_cached. Its not a term I know from elsewhere. It does not give me associations to anything I already know and love which would have been helpful 😄 .

Naming is hard! I can't reply for Philipp, but if you have other names to suggest I guess it's never too late, in particular if they're a net improvement over the current state.

I looked at the failing tests. They don't seem related to this PR as far as I can see.

They seem related actually, pre-commit failed because of a trailing whitespace: https://github.com/holoviz/panel/runs/7589741660?check_suite_focus=true#step:5:79