compile time class introspection?

[Serg Kovrov]

janderson wrote:
> I disagree, I think an orthogonal design like D is a good thing in many 
> cases.  It means that you don't have to learn so many keywords and are 
> more likely to determine the syntax yourself.  It also means code is 
> generally easier to maintain due to generalization because you can often 
>   reuse the code in more different ways then originally intended.
> 
> I don't regard the solution given as a hack it seems pretty obvious to 
> me.  Either way it would have to be documented.  If you don't like it, 
> write a wrapper template.
> 
> Also I don't think good orthogonality means the language has to get more 
> complex.  I think its about making the common coding primitives easy to 
> use however also making them powerful enough if the user wants to extend 
> them to something that is less common.
> 
> -Joel

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "orthogonal design", and what 
it has to do with code reuse? I was talking about language facilities, 
something not available as user or library code.

I just want to say I like idea of language features to be thoughtfully 
designed, as opposite to accidentally discovered side-effects. I have to 
say I don't really care about actual origin of a feature, but rather 
what it feels like.

-- serg.