DeVault: Announcing the Hare programming language [LWN.net]

DeVault: Announcing the Hare programming language

Posted May 2, 2022 18:17 UTC (Mon) by bartoc (guest, #124262)
In reply to: DeVault: Announcing the Hare programming language by pbonzini
Parent article: DeVault: Announcing the Hare programming language

zig suggests that there is an interesting and fruitful design space enabled by not doing implicit instantiation of generics (I think c++ got implicit instantiation _almost_ by accident because of the way cfront worked, but that was before my time)

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DeVault: Announcing the Hare programming language

Posted May 2, 2022 19:40 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Having to explicitly instantiate templates may certainly have put the kibosh on some of the ridiculous template metaprogramming I've seen in C++. However, I suspect it would have been used anyways because when a language only gives you a limited set of tools and the best thing for turning that screw is a scissor blade, by gosh, someone is going to use that scissor blade. Whether oodles of compiler output when you hold it wrong or gigantic TUs of template instantiations is worse is up for debate.