For my (relatively simple) use cases, I've had a significantly better time using comptime than templates; the syntax and the quality of the error messages are a lot simpler in Zig. While I've never attempted to do anything super fancy with templates in C/C++, my gut feeling is that comptime can provide most, if not all, of functionality that templates provide. (But C/C++ template experts please chime in if this is not the case.)
Former Cpp dev here. If I never have to debug a template barf it'll be too soon. By the end of my time in C/Cpp land I'd written more C than anything, with occasional "structs with con/de-structors". Happily the next gen of systems languages fit about in that niche already!
