OT: on IDEs and code writing on steroids

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Yigal Chripun wrote:
> I think you miss the point here.
> Generics and code generation are two separate and orthogonal features 
> that where conflated together by C++.

It's kind of odd, then, that for example the Generative Programming book 
(http://www.generative-programming.org) chose to treat the two notions 
in conjunction.

> while you can do powerful stuff with templates it smells of trying to 
> write Haskel code with the C pre-proceesor.
> if you want to see a clean solution to this issue look at Nemerle.
> essentially, their AST Macro system provides multi-level compilation.
> 
> c++ templates are a horrible hack designed to ween off C programmers 
> from using the pre-processor and the D templates provide mostly cosmetic 
>  changes to this. they do not solve the bigger design issue.

What is the bigger design issue?


Andrei