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I guess that just hasn't been my experience at all. I don't think a nested C++ template is any more complicated than a CL macro with a corresponding level of ne

• qppo 6y ago
  I'd argue it's significantly more complex because you don't have access to the C++ AST, templates are ultimately non-hygienic macros, their results are invisible to both developer and user, and potential errors are inscrutable. They're difficult to abstract over, and you will wind up repeating yourself quite often since you can't just write normal C++ code with C++ includes for helper functions and data structures. I should be more clear about what I meant on the bug. C++ templates force you to understand the entirety of the language at once and hack around its edges because it doesn't support actual meta programming. It's hard for me to come up with a concrete example, but my experience writing some advanced compile-time evaluation with SFINAE patterns left me forgetting how things worked within minutes of typing them. Compare to say Rust, where the generics implementation is much cleaner and macro system better flushed out and easier to read/understand. Or the LISPs where your macro is just more LISP code. And not for nothing, templates destroy compile times. They take a long time to write and edit and make everyone else using them work slower. All told, templates do not make it easier to write C++ except in trivial cases and first-order abstractions.