Templates problem

[jmh530 via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Wednesday, 7 September 2016 at 19:19:23 UTC, data pulverizer 
wrote:
>
> For some time I have been considering a problem to do with 
> creating tables with unbounded types, one of the failed 
> attempts is here: 
> https://forum.dlang.org/thread/gdjaoxypicsxlfvzwbvt@forum.dlang.org?page=1
> I then exchanged emails with Lucian, Sparrows creator and he 
> very quickly and simply outlined the solution to the problem. 
> Thereafter I read his PhD thesis - one of the most informative 
> texts in computer science I have read and very well written.
>
> At the moment, there are lots of languages attempting to solve 
> the dynamic-static loop, being able to have features inherent 
> in dynamic programming languages, while keeping the safety and 
> performance that comes with a static compiled programming 
> language, and then doing so in a language that doesn't cause 
> your brain to bleed. The "One language to rule them all" motif 
> of Julia has hit the rocks; one reason is because they now 
> realize that their language is being held back because the 
> compiler cannot infer certain types for example: 
> http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/notebook/2015/11/28/why-julias-dataframes-are-still-slow/

I don't see any reason why D can't implement pandas DataFrames 
without needing to change the language at all
http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/generated/pandas.DataFrame.html
It's just a lot of work.

The simplest I can think of is a struct containing a tuple that 
contains slices of equal length and an array of strings 
containing column names. You could have a specialization with a 
two-dimensional array (or ndslice).