> been implementing reflection and introspection through macro magic etc. for decades at this point.

Having a flaky pile of junk as an alternative is never been an excuse to not fix the problem properly.

Every proper modern language (Rust, Kotlin, Zig, Swift, even freaking Golang) has a form of runtime reflection or static introspection.

Only C++ does not. It was done historically with a mess of macros or a pre-compiler (qt-moc) that all have an entire pile of issue.

> the approach is to make the language even more complex than it already is - e.g. two new operators

The problem of rampant complexity in C++ is not so much about the new features when they bring something and make sense.

It is about its inability to remove the old stuff even if it is consensual that it is garbage (e.g iostreams).

> Having a flaky pile of junk as an alternative is never been an excuse to not fix the problem properly.

Thank you. Some people use the phrases "real projects" and "production code" as if they imply some standard of high quality.