reduce complexity of traits

[dirk-thomas]

With the newer version of VS 2015 Update 3 some of the complexity added to the traits might be obsolete. From a brief look at the history these PRs seems like good candidates: #122, #157

Based on the discussion in #286.

[clalancette]

While this might be nice, given the age of this and the fact that things have changed drastically in the last 6 years, I'm going to close this one out.