Daniel Voigt Godoy - Deep Learning with PyTorch Step-by-Step A Beginner’s Guide-leanpub

Static Method
The “@” indicates that the method sitting below it, _visualize_tensors(), is
being decorated by the staticmethod decorator function.
"What is a decorator?"
Python decorators is a big topic on its own, too involved to explain here. If
you want to learn more about it, check Real Python’s "Primer on Python
Decorators." [93] But I will not leave you without a working knowledge of what
that particular (and somewhat common) decorator does.
The @staticmethod decorator allows the method to be called on an
uninstantiated class object. It is as if we’re attaching a method to a class but
that method does not depend on an instance of the class it is attached to.
It is easy to see why: In every other method we have created so far for the
StepByStep class, the first argument has ALWAYS been self. So, those
methods had access to the class they belonged to; better yet, they had access
to a particular instance and its attributes. Remember the Dog class? The
bark() method knew the name of the dog because its first argument was the
instance representing the dog (self).
A static method does not have a self argument. The inner
workings of the function must be independent of the
instance of the class it belongs to. The static method can
be executed from the class itself instead of from one of its
instances.
Let me illustrate it with yet another silly example:
class Cat(object):
def __init__(self, name):
self.name = name
@staticmethod
def meow():
print('Meow')
390 | Chapter 5: Convolutions