[kartoffelsaft]

> The template metaprogramming C++ offers is the most powerful of any imperative language

I'm curious what languages you're comparing to here. Feels like it's only slightly more expressive than pure generics, but I admittedly haven't done much template metaprogramming myself. How does it compare to, say, Zig's comptime?

[lumrn]

I’ll preface this by saying I mostly use C++ and have just basic experience in Zig, but as far as I understand comptime is much more procedural than C++ templates which are more declarative. With templates you get quite good pattern matching through the compiler’s machinery, for instance through template specialisation, while Zig, in my understanding, requires these to be handled manually in code. Personally, comptime feels like constexpr/consteval in C++ but with the ability to interact with the type system itself. The significant downside of C++ metaprogramming is that sometimes many features interact weakly and feel very much tacked on top of each other while Zig’s looks more cohesive. Perhaps someone with more Zig experience can weigh in.

[dnautics]

> The significant downside of C++ metaprogramming is that sometimes many features interact weakly and feel very much tacked on top of each other while Zig’s looks more cohesive.

spot on, in my experience. nothing in zig triggers my lite OCD.