Summary

Templates provide two services. The first is code reuse, but in a different way than inheritance. Inheritance requires a certain type relationship. Templates require only that the compiler be capable of finding the functionality required of the specified type. Inheritance makes type requirements, whereas templates take what types we give them.

The other service that templates provide is efficiency. By mixing in types at compile time, we can use static binding to make decisions at runtime instead of at compile time. This is the key to the promise of smaller, faster code that templates make.