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From: Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email) (SeeWebsiteForEmail_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-05-08 18:10:55


Arkadiy Vertleyb wrote:
> Is it "cumbersome"? I don't know -- is template
> metaprogramming "cumbersome"? I really believe they are very much alike.
> Both were not in the initial design, both were later discovered, and both
> are now "glorified" by some people, and hated by the others.

First, the degree of cumbersomeness depends on what those tools are used
for. But that's a tautology.

Second, I disagree that the template engine and the preprocessor are
similar. I see very very little similarity. The former is a mean pure
functional language fostering pattern matching, recursion, and sporting
knowledge and high integration with the non-templated part of C++. The
computational model is known and powerful. In contrast, programming
based on the token-oriented preprocessor uses arcane idioms and
computations, which IMO just takes us back 40 years. I don't find the
two similar at all, except probably that they both are being used for
things they weren't intended for :o).

Andrei


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