Templates as in C++ are a historical accident. Erwin Unruh demonstrated to the C++ commitee how they had accidentally created a second, compile time programmin

Templates as in C++ are a historical accident. Erwin Unruh demonstrated to the C++ commitee how they had accidentally created a second, compile time programming language inside the primary language. He did this by calculating primes and printing them in error messages. People got carried away a bit with the power made available by this new language. Unfortunately there are no basic ergonomics in template metaprogramming because it was not intended to be a programming language.