toString refactor in druntime

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 11/3/2014 2:28 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> I had a very nasty experience with using a template-based API. I vowed to avoid
> it wherever possible.
>
> The culprit was std::string -- it changed something internally from one version
> of libc++ to the next on Linux. So I had to recompile everything, but the whole
> system I was using was with .so objects.
>
> templates do NOT make good API types IMO.

It seems this is blaming templates for a different problem.

If I have:

   struct S { int x; };

in my C .h file, and I change it to:

   struct S { int x,y; };

Then all my API functions that take S as a value argument will require 
recompilation of any code that uses it.

Would you conclude that C sux for making APIs? Of course not. You'd say that a 
stable API should use reference types, not value types.

Having templates or not is irrelevant.