Concepts are what ML and Haskell have been calling “signatures” and “type classes”, respectively, for ages. Unlike concepts, which only exist in the collective minds of C++ programmers, signatures and type classes are actual features of existing type systems, so, for instance, the type checker can make sure that you aren't trying to use an inexistent (member) function - without ever attempting to instantiate your generic code.
It is very unfortunate that F# got rid of this important feature.
> Yep, that's why everyone wants Concepts to be standardized.
What I'm telling you is other languages have had this very same feature for well over two decades.
> I'm still not clear what the issue is here.
Here's a thought exercise: Design an API for manipulating graphs, nodes and edges. The concrete representation of these three types must be hidden from the user by language-enforced mechanisms. Using `friend` is not allowed. Using the pimpl pattern is not allowed. Bypassing type safety is not allowed.
The fundamental problem that you'll run into is that C++'s access levels work with one type at a time. ML modules don't have this problem, because a single signature can specify multiple abstract types. An implementation can have access to the representations of all three types (graph, node, edge), while at the same time hiding these representations from all clients.
> Are you talking about something like Go interfaces?
Yes.
> For my use cases static polymorphism is generally preferable to dynamic polymorphism and in those cases where dynamic polymorphism is desirable C++ style interfaces are often sufficient.
I agree: static polymorphism is preferable whenever possible. It is easier to reason about both for language users (who care about correctness) and compiler writers (who care about optimizations). However, sometimes you want dynamic polymorphism, and that's what objects (in the object-orientation sense, which you can think of as “thingies that have vtables”) are for.
