But that's not dependent types. Dependent types are types that depend on values. If all the arguments to a function are either types or values, then you don't have dependent types: you have kind polymorphism, as implemented for example in GHC extensions [1].

> The second half is how every other major feature is expressed _directly_ via comptime/partial evaluation, not even syntax sugar is necessary. Generic, macros, and conditional compilation are the three big ones.

I'd argue that not having syntactic sugar is pretty minor, but reasonable people can differ I suppose.

[1]: https://ghc.gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/doc/users_guide/exts/poly...