Reimplementing the bulk of std.meta iteratively

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 9/28/20 11:55 AM, Bruce Carneal wrote:
> On Monday, 28 September 2020 at 14:16:20 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 9/28/20 8:46 AM, Stefan Koch wrote:
>>> On Monday, 28 September 2020 at 03:03:01 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> On 9/27/20 10:58 PM, Bruce Carneal wrote:
>>>>> Disclaimer: Andrei has stated, effectively, that I have little 
>>>>> standing to opine on these issues.
>>>>
>>>> Sorry! Didn't mean to sound dismissive at all. Meant to just say, 
>>>> don't shun templates, embrace them and thrive.
>>>
>>> In practice template can quite literally explode though.
>>> Which could be a valid reason to shun them.
>>> You can embrace them, of course, and thrive.
>>> The question is for how long you will thrive.
>>
>> For a very long time judging by the success C++ is enjoying with them.
> 
> As you note, by employing a variety of "best practices", of 
> extra-language conventions, of one-level-of-indirection wrappers, of 
> "human must certify this correct" mechanisms, the C++ community has 
> indeed "thrived".
> 
> We've not settled for that meta programming drudgery, that friction, in 
> the past.  You know better this better than anyone else on the planet.  
> I hope we don't "settle" going forward.

(Not getting some of the uses of quotation marks.)

That's a bit backhanded because it implies I promote settling for meta 
programming drudgery. Did you mean to say that?

On the contrary, I find type reification interesting exactly because it 
takes you from said drudgery to familiar land - first-class values that 
can be manipulated in traditional manner. Should you need to get back to 
type-land, dereification helps with that. We can now draw from a large 
body of existing theory and practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(computer_science)