David Bergman <davidb@home.se> wrote:
[...] By the way, I think there indeed is a correlation between "make -k"/"bjam"-adaptable developers and those using the most complex portions of Boost.
[...] I've worked with
quite advanced and competent developers who are only comfortable in an IDE.
But they sure would be able to change one or two environment variables and type 'bjam', right?
[...]
The risk is that Boost will inevitably belong to those 50% of the C++ standard that is never touched by most developers, ever. None of the "C++ experts" I have interviewed for employment has heard of the keyword 'typename' or used template template parameters, or used 'virtual' base classes.
[...] Boost actually might help reunifying C++ again, instead of constituting two languages, one for MFC:ers [...] and one for "experts", which it does today, IMEHO.
Just for some background: We are using more than two dozen 3rd-party SDKs and libraries, both free software and commercial ones, some across almost half a dozen platforms. We are using boost since 2001. I have never written an MFC app. Not a single one. (Of a dozen or so developers here, I know one who has for some toy projects.) I am considered the "C++ expert" here and people often are annoyed that I am forcing them to learn where 'typename' is required, how template template parameters are working, and what these 4k error messages from template meta code mean. :^> (I would suppose everyone here knows what virtual bases are for.) I have failed to build/install boost without putting considerably more effort into it than I needed to put into many other libraries. That is, I was unable to just download it and check it out. I think this would be the same with most Win/Mac developers here.
/David Bergman
Schobi -- SpamTrap@gmx.de is never read I'm Schobi at suespammers dot org "Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving" Terry Pratchett