[Sharlin]

You did ask more generally:

> Does that really need to be part of the language though, or as long as you can code it, or have it in the standard library, it's fine?

And my answer is, yes. I don't consider `std::variant` a proper replacement, more like a crutch that may even be worse than not having anything at all, because its existence can be used as an argument against introducing language-level sum types in the future.