Shout out to D at cppcon, when talkign about ranges.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 10 October 2015 at 22:06:31 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> So there was knowledge of said long history of ranges in C++. 
> Far as I can tell >"Iterators Must Go" was immediately and 
> universally recognized as a turning point in >how people 
> approached getting work done using ranges.

You've already published the background for your library approach 
here:

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1407357&seqNum=4

Which basically states the foundation: GoF iterators + STL. So 
you've already killed the novelty game yourself.

GoF patterns is just an attempt to describe _common_ patterns in 
software design. Stepanov "C++ pointer-iterators" was an attempt 
to break away from the heavier GoF iterators (which D calls 
ranges) with something more lightweight.

If one tries to enumerate all kinds of types of iterators one 
will end up with a combinatorial explosion, so much for 
generality. Stepanovs approach was probably also an attempt to 
get away from this combinatorial explosion by providing 
pointer-semantics instead.

One of the most important and convenient iterators (which C++ 
fails to deliver) are what GoF calls "roboust iterators": 
iterators that allow deletions. To get there safely and 
conveniently iterators have to be made a language feature, since 
it requires static analysis in the general case, IMO.

Want to innovate? Provide language support.