mixin + CTFE, to big a hammer??

[BCS]

reposted after posting in wrong NG :b

> I have been thinking about the new functionality added by the code
> mixin and CTFE features and I'm thinking that they may be "to big a
> hammer" for may jobs.
> 
> Take my parser generator as an example. I don't think there would be
> anything to gain by using mixin as the primary method of code
> generation. Firstly, code generated this way will inherently be harder
> to read and debug. Also it doesn't do anything that tuple iteration
> doesn't do just as well.
> 
> I will admit that there may be some things to be gained there by using
> mixin code (the terminal and action call backs could benefit a lot
> from this) but these are only minor changes. Also mixin code would be
> invaluable for some more complicated cases.
> 
> Why is this important? I think that many valuable types of code
> generation would benefit more by improving the static control
> structures (foreach/if/etc.) than they would from more mixin like
> features.
> 
> One feature I would like is a true static foreach, one that can
> iterate over any built in type arrays or a tuple but does unrolling
> and per-loop semantic analysis like with tuples. This, in conjunction
> with CTFE, would make for huge improvements in what can readily be
> accomplished by moving much of the processing of the code generator
> input into function and out of templates.
> 
> Basically, I'm saying that while mixin+CTFE is good from many things,
> it shouldn't be pushed at the expense of the more mundane techniques.
> 
> Just some thoughts, what do you all think?
>