[SuperV1234]

It is "cryptic" and "ugly" to you just because you're not familiar with it. You'd pick the macro-based implementation because you are familiar with it.

Seeing this argumentation is so tiresome, because it feels like there is a lack of self-awareness regarding what is "familiar" and what isn't, which is subconsciously translated to "ugly" and "bad".

[delegate]

Have you ever used other (modern) programming languages ?

In a lot of languages, you achieve the same with 1 line of code. It's not about familiarity, it's about the fact that it's a long and convoluted incantation to get the name of an enum.

Why do I have to be familiar with all those weird symbols just to do a trivial thing ?

Update:

Zig:

const Color = enum { red, green, blue };

const name = @tagName(Color.red); // "red"

Rust:

#[derive(Display)]

enum Color { Red, Green, Blue }

let name = Color::Red.to_string(); // "Red"

Clojure:

(name :red) => "red"

[throwaway7356]

And what if you want to implement something like Rust's "derive"? That is what the article shows.

As far as I understand you would have to mess with individual parser tokens in Rust instead of high-level structures like "enum" (C++ reflection). It would be much, much uglier to implement anything like "to_enum_string" in Rust as you would have to re-implement parts of the compiler to get the "enum" concept out of a list of tokens.

[SuperV1234]

C++:

  enum Color { red, green, blue };
  auto name = to_enum_string(Color::Red); // "Red"

[shooly]

... and where does that `to_enum_string` come from exactly? It doesn't seem to be built-in, which is the point of the parent comment.

[SuperV1234]

It's a fair comparison. The parent comment isn't showing the compiler source code for the built-in reflection mechanisms.

You won't have to care about ^^ and [:X:] if you just want to consume reflection-based utils, which was the whole point of my comment.

[shooly]

What? No. Parent comment is comparing C++ to modern programming languages, showcasing how they provide commonly used utilities out-of-the-box instead of making every programmer re-implement them again and again and again and again and again.

[SuperV1234]

The parent comment is quite clear:

> Why do I have to be familiar with all those weird symbols just to do a trivial thing ?

And my answer demonstrates that you do not have to.

[gpderetta]

The whole point of reflection is that it doesn't have to be builtin.

[wiseowise]

No, it is objectively cryptic and ugly. I honestly don’t understand how can anyone keep up with this garbage, but the ship has sailed long time ago. It is just a soup of symbols at this point.

[SuperV1234]

No, it objectively isn't objective.