Gradual 'tree' typing and C++

[Iain Sandoe]

Hi Arsen,

> On 21 Jul 2026, at 15:12, Martin Uecker via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:

> Am Dienstag, dem 21.07.2026 um 14:19 +0200 schrieb Arsen Arsenović:
>> [for convenience, I'll be using 'ttree' to refer to the hypothetical
>> gradually-typed tree system and its central type]
>> 
>> Martin Uecker <muecker@gwdg.de> writes:
>> 
>>> I do not think so. Alone the compile-time cost of templates makes this
>>> a bad trade-off in my opinion, and I find compilation time already to
>>> be problematic for GCC.
>> 
>> That's a reason to improve the GCC implementation of templates (of
>> course, no easy feat), not to make GCC less maintainable.
> 
> you seem to take it for granted that it templates improve
> maintainability, but in my personal experience the opposite
> is true.

+1 on that, I think that they make debugging experience worse (independent
of the compile-time impact).

Also, as I see it the basic model for TREEs is one of multiple inheritance - the
c++ virtual function model** would seem a better fit (but I am not volunteering to
implement if :D )

Iain

** that is perhaps even more true for the hooks infra - which would benefit from
default arguments etc if it were implemented there.