But one thing I liked about C++ was the partial ordering scheme for template selection. I liked it so much D uses it for both templates and function overload selection (as opposed to the multi-level argument matching scheme C++ uses). Once I figured it out, I thought it was a beauty.
PS. I also had a pleasant time when I finally grokked Lisp's CLOS generic method partial ordering. It even gives you the ordering on demand as part of the meta-object protocol: https://clisp.sourceforge.io/impnotes/mop-gf.html#gf-argumen...
> Multiple function templates that match the argument list of a function call can be available. C++ defines a partial ordering of function templates to specify which function should be called. The ordering is partial because there can be some templates that are considered equally specialized.
> The compiler chooses the most specialized template function available from the possible matches.
And it goes on to give an example.
Crucially, this is completely different from say the way function overload resolution happens in C++. Fun stuff happens in your brain when you try combining different types of selection/overloading (ever tried combining template and regular function overloading on a templated class method?).
Compare ADL (https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/adl), overload resolution (https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/overload_resoluti...) and function template overloading (https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/function_template...)