compile time class introspection?

[Hasan Aljudy]

janderson wrote:
> Serg Kovrov wrote:
>> Beginning of the thread is in digitalmars.D.learn
>>
>> Chris Nicholson-Sauls wrote:
>>> This is an important thing about D that probably deserves a long and 
>>> extensive tutorial somewhere...  Many of its cooler features aren't 
>>> really features at all, but side-effects of other more general 
>>> features.  So, to reuse this same example, no D doesn't have a way to 
>>> ask if a class or structure has a particular method.  D /does/ have a 
>>> way to check for valid types... which, incidentally, non-existant 
>>> members are invalid types.  So, voila, a side-effect of checking its 
>>> type is that you confirm it exists.
>>>
>>> There are others... a plethora, even.  Walter is fond of lots of 
>>> small things that can be put together to achieve amazing things -- 
>>> and I don't strictly disagree -- but it isn't usually obvious what 
>>> you can do with those nifty little gadgets.
>>>
>>> -- Chris Nicholson-Sauls
>>
>> This is really sad that it turned this way. As I understand Walter 
>> himself criticizes such approach:
>>
>> "Many useful aspects of C++ templates have been discovered rather than 
>> designed."
>>
> 
> I think its great in C++ that you can do more with it then indented. Why 
> limit the programmers imagination?  Sure some hacks should be program 
> features, like the static_assert.  However, I think its great that you 
> could have static assets in C/++ at all.  In fact many of the 
> "improvements" D has are from some great ideas programmers "hacked" into 
> C++.
> 

IMHO:

That's not too bad when your experimenting.

But it's really really bad for a programming language that is being used 
for commercial applications.