I'm going to jump in here because I am interested in this question as well.
It's not the first time I've seen this, and I still do not understand what the belief of template meta-programming causing bloat is based
on.
I think the general impression is that if I write a template class like: template<typename T, size_t N> class something { public: a bunch of methods using m_arr private: T m_arr[N]; } Then the code may well be generated for each kind of T the class is instantiated for and possible for each kind of N as well. Now, I don't know if compiler technology can combine all the code instances automatically or not. I do know that you can rewrite it with a base class such that the implementation is typesafe for the user, but "a bunch of methods" won't be duplicated (depending upon what they are anyway). Maybe you know. Can the compiler recognize something like the above and only create one copy of the code in the class? joe