Even when the programmer is willing to manage his/her own structures, static libraries may suffer when complicated compositions are involved. The usual language parameterization mechanisms are not always sufficient for the patterns of information flow we need. We have found out that if we were to implement a static version of the DiSTiL components with C++ templates we would have to pay the cost of a virtual dispatch for, at least, all our allocation operations. Of course, even then the meta-level optimizations and advanced error checking currently performed by the library would be infeasible.

Let’s shortly consider again the issue of error-checking and reporting. DiSTiL employs domain-specific information and can, thus, produce high level error-messages exactly at the point where the errors occur.