Fergus writes:

> I think it's becoming clear by now that the theoretical disadvantages
> of undecidable type checking are often not significant in practice.
> Experience with C++, Gofer, ghc, Mercury, etc. all seems to confirm this.

In this context, people may find the paper _C++ Templates as Partial Evaluation_ by 
Todd Veldhuizen (PEPM'99) interesting: it describes how it was discovered that C++ 
templates had accidentally introduced a compile-time Turing-complete functional/logic 
language into C++, and how this is now used by numeric libraries to exceedingly useful 
ends.

URL is http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tveldhui/papers/

--KW 8-)
-- 
: Keith Wansbrough, MSc, BSc(Hons) (Auckland) ------------------------:
: PhD Student, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, England. :
:  (and recently of the University of Glasgow, Scotland. [><] )       :
: Native of Antipodean Auckland, New Zealand: 174d47' E, 36d55' S.    :
: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/kw217/  mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]     :
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