But then your code can't be used by anyone without your preprocessor. There is a lot of value in plain C metaprogramming because it can be compiled with an ordi

But then your code can't be used by anyone without your preprocessor. There is a lot of value in plain C metaprogramming because it can be compiled with an ordinary C compiler. You can, however, use a script to generate some of the preprocessor boilerplate while still having the templates configurable and instantiable with an ordinary C compiler. This is how my metaprogramming library Pottery works: https://github.com/ludocode/pottery https://github.com/ludocode/pottery It uses #include for templates rather than code block macros, something the article doesn't really go into. It's more powerful this way and the templates are far more readable; aside from the generated metaprogramming boilerplate, the templated code looks like (and preprocesses to) ordinary C.