Template instantiation syntax

[Walter Bright]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> But it's not the << and >> that make C++ templates hard to understand.

I think it does. I could never get past the visual ambiguity with less 
than, and with the streams, the ambiguity with >>. But that isn't the 
worst of it, the C++ template definition syntax sets my teeth on edge.

>  Replacing that with some other character or character sequence would
> make very little difference in how difficult they are to understand.
> It's more the lack of a straighforward equivalent for things like
> static if.

There are a lot of issues that needed improvement.

> Changing details like the character used for this or that can make the
> code more or less readable though.  But that doesn't really affect how
> difficult it is to remember how to write something.

I disagree with that assessment. There are aesthetics to architecture, 
fonts, web pages, cars, dance, clothes, etc. Break those aesthetics, and 
you've got something people just don't like, even if they cannot 
identify why.

Take the immutable vs invariant aesthetic. There is no technical reason 
to prefer one over the other. But people seem to just like immutable better.