That is a C++ limitation, not a limitation of compiled languages. Object Pascal had the ability to describe its own types since Delphi 1.0 under Windows 3.1, i

That is a C++ limitation, not a limitation of compiled languages. Object Pascal had the ability to describe its own types since Delphi 1.0 under Windows 3.1, it is how object serialization works (forms, controls and other components are just object instances serialized to/from disk). This is data the compiler already has in memory, having some method to save that data to the final executable and a few functions in the standard library to parse that data and give back meaningful results shouldn't really be that much of an effort (and still be very portable), and yet for some reason C and C++ do not provide it even though other languages did decades ago.