Why templates are bad

You could say I learned what I know about web development backwards, but I had a lot of fun in the process, and it became a passion. Imagine you want to add a new page to your website. Without a templated structure, you would have to build every page from scratch. Templates allow you to setup uniform page structures for different types of content.

You might have a template for an interior page, a blog post, a landing page, etc. This makes adding a new page a breeze for a non-technical user. What about those special features you want in your site? A carousel slider, booking calendar, or eCommerce shopping cart, for example. Do you really need your web developer to hard code those features into your site? Doing so could cost you thousands of dollars for those features alone.

Using an open source system like Wordpress, we're able to provide these features at a fraction of the cost without sacrificing a bit of functionality. Let me point out, there is a lot of gray area here.

Some web designers use out-of-the-box templates and offer a quick turnaround at a low price. This works for companies who have a small budget and don't need professional design or advanced features on their websites. Many designers take a template and customize it for the client. They rip out the parts that you don't like, add in the features that you need, and recode the styling to match your branding.

Even if your web designer uses a template to develop your site, there is still a lot of work involved. Here are some things a professional designer can more efficiently with the help of a template:. If you're worried your designer is overcharging you or is not a "legitimate" web designer, here are red flags to be on the lookout for.

This question was posed on Quora , and I agree with the top-voted response from Joel Rivera :. So it becomes a win win scenario.. That is in line with our school of thought here at Ascend. Generally speaking, no, it is not a bad practice to use web design templates, and using frameworks or templates are often the best solution for a client.

Wouldn't a Meta-Program and Templates effectively have to take the same steps? Don't they both just need to parse the program and output some code? For example, recreating that error with my own array list and find function only gives the following: 1 2 3 4 5. So, I guess this is saying that evaluating a complex meta-program written via templates, means you have to evaluate template expressions, convert them to the appropriate machine code, then execute that code.

Whereas, Casey's metaprograms simply read text and spit out C code; no weird language in a language sort of insanity. Is this correct? Yes, almost correct. When evaluating templates they are not converted to machine code. It's not a real VM, it just behaves similarly to VM. It searches available types, tries to match whats needed - usually quite an overhead. I do wonder though. Doesn't this offset any compilation savings we make vs templates?

Because, wouldn't compiling and starting a entire program executing on every build have a cost associated with it also? Like, the compiler already has compiled code that deals with templates, whereas Casey compiles his from scratch every time.

Another factor is that a lot of complex template metaprogramming is very similar to functional programming. You forgto to mention that size of the produced code also increases. That is why templates are rarely used in embedded devices with very low storage capacity unless you define the template inside the source file that is make it accessable ONLY inside that source file and not to any other that imports the source file's header.

People who say templates increase code often aren't comparing like for like - they're comparing template code to an alternate solution to the problem, not comparing template code to the equivalent non-template code.

Pharap Java uses type erasure to reduce the generated code.. Storage space gets cheaper as time goes by, and even large programs tend to be smaller than high-quality images and video. For example, the std::function type uses type erasure to allow it to refer to both function pointers and lambda functions. This is an example of where type erasure can be useful, but in general type erasure has a lot of flaws compared to reified generics or templates, which is why most languages opt for a better approach in general.

Show 2 more comments. Paul Paul 6, 4 4 gold badges 32 32 silver badges 45 45 bronze badges. The notion of using types to achieve computational goals is very clearly a hack — and moreover, one that was never sought but rather stumbled upon.. Ofek Shilon Ofek Shilon I do agree, I see myself in every day coding more disadvantage using templates than advantage, specially with your second point.

Good points: powerful; allows you to: prescribe compile-time attributes and computation describe generic algorithms and datastructures do many other things that would otherwise be repetitive, boring, and mistake-prone does them in-language, without macros which can be far more hazardous and obscure! Bad points: powerful; allows you to: provoke compile-time errors that are verbose, misleading, and obscure though not as obscure and misleading as macros Templates should be used sparingly.

Dan Olson Dan Olson I can think of: typedef ed typenames in ancestor types aren't inherited by template classes. The need to sprinkle typename and template keywords in appropriate places. Member function templates cannot be virtual. These things can usually be overcome, but they're a pain. Some people hate templates I do because: On maintainability pov, the wrong use of templates can have a negative effect ten times stronger than the initial advantage of time they were supposed to bring.

On optimization pov, compiler optimizations they allow are nothing compared to an optimal algorithm and the use of multi threading. On compiling time pov, wrong use of templates can a very negative effect on parsing, compilation and linking phases, when poorly written templated declaration brings tons of useless parasite declarations in each compilation units here is how lines of code can produce an. Alexis Pautrot Alexis Pautrot 1 1 gold badge 10 10 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges.

I don't see how they are hard to read. What would you replace it with? I mean the template source code, I'll correct it on the question — fmsf.

Thomas, what's wrong with that? Show 3 more comments.