Template Metaprogramming Made Easy (Huh?)

[Nick Sabalausky]

"language_fan" <foo at bar.com.invalid> wrote in message 
news:h8bqe5$v8l$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:49:47 -0400, Nick Sabalausky thusly wrote:
>
>> "language_fan" <foo at bar.com.invalid> wrote in message
>
>>> Nowadays when everyone soon has 12-core CPUs in front of them,
>>> especially x86-64 ones, managing each register and memory module (cache
>>> or main memory) manually is a major pain in the ass.
>>
>> That's just plain arrogant and ignorant. I swear, the next time I see
>> yet another person pulling out the "That's all they offer in the stores,
>> therefore that must be only thing that's actually in use, and if anyone
>> uses less, well then screw them for not being as big of a consumer whore
>> as I am" bullshit, my head's going to explode.
>
> If I go to a store, the cheapest computer I can buy has a dual core cpu -
> that's just how it is. The $500..600 class computers have quad cores.
> Even the $100..200 range netbooks soon have (if they don't yet) dual
> cores.

Argh! That's exactly what I'm talking about! I don't care what the stores do 
or don't have in stock! Store stock != Actual usage. I swear I'm going to 
tattoo that into someone's forehead someday.

Plus there's the second-hand market. And these days there's a *lot* of 
second-hand hardware that's perfectly capable of doing anything that most 
people would ever need to do. My secondary system, which does everything I 
need it to, cost me around US$75, second-hand. Find me a quad-core system at 
that price...(and then ask me why I would care since I already have a 
computer that runs fine and does what I need it to do).

> If we assume that most computers just break down in 2-5 years, we
> will pretty soon have only multi-core computers left. My old Pentium 2 is
> already quite dead and the motherboard in my Athlon XP 2000+ broke down
> last year. I've given away all older machines. I really don't expect them
> to be functional or usable these days.
>

Fine, but if you're buying computers that break down in 2-5 years, then 
you're buying *really shitty* computers, so it's a meaningless premise. Both 
of my computers are made from parts that are around 8 years old, and they 
both work *perfectly fine*. Hell, I have two 486's and an Apple 2 that still 
run (not that I use them much). Having breakdowns after only 2-5 years is a 
clear sign that you're either buying garbage in the first place, or your UPS 
is on the fritz (or don't have one), or something. Either way, something's 
definitely not right.

And before I get the inevitable "D00d thats soo old U shud by a new 1!", 
yes, I *could* go buy a new system. But why should I? I don't do a single 
thing that can't be done just fine on my single-cores. And the only things 
that run poorly are the things are written by teenage lazy hack "I don't 
care about intelligent coding, because everyone should be just like me and 
want to sink all their money into new hardware just because they can!" 
programmers, or by people like Cliffy B and those at Apple/Sun/MS who have a 
vested interest in getting people to buy new hardware.

>> Plus...what in the world makes you think VMed languages don't get
>> errors, memory leaks, and race conditions? Segfaults I'll grant you, but
>> that's hardly any different for the end-user than an unhandled
>> exception.
>
> There are couple of things a VM fixes. Not all of them, but some.
> Switching to a safer languages helps even more. I don't like C++.

I don't like C++ either ;)