[Koshkin]

> I am not fully convinced that the general idea of language evolution implemented as ruleset outside of the language itself is the way to go

I think you are right - as far as 'the' language is concerned. The complexity (and the slowness) of a C++ compiler now is mostly due to the complexity - and the slowness - of the built-in interpreter of the template meta-language. There are other, saner languages, such as Common Lisp, where the meta-language is indistinguishable from the language itself, which, in addition to its greater simplicity, greatly contributes to the reasonable compile times. In the C/C++ land, it might have been possible to use a similar approach instead of introducing a separate macro/template syntax, a good example being the approach taken in the design of ASP (active server pages), PHP, and the like.