Looks great to me. A few comments: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Daniel J. Duffy" <ddu...@datasim.nl> Date: Feb 15, 12:55 am Subject: "Software Development using the C++ Boost Library", book in preparatiion To: Boost Developers Archive
1. Higher Order Functions I used to use boost::function a lot, but now find myself using templated classes with deduction of the function type instead and haven't used boost::function for a long time . I think when writing this section, it would be nice to have a good sense of when type erasure using boost::function is necessary.
I found that the main reason I was using boost::function was not type erasure but rather that the types of the functions I was storing were complicated so it was easier to stuff in a boost::function and then have an easier way to reference the type. After I started using auto, decltype, and make_ functions, this became unnecessary. Of course, you can't count on people having "declype" or "auto", so my proposal would be to see if BOOST_AUTO, etc. should be suggested as a temporary solution for people without C++0X turned on. One other thing worth thinking about here is whether you should plan for standardizing on the tr1 namespace(and explain how to use boost::tr1). This might future proof the book as most mainstream compilers seem to have tr1 already. That said, I had a lot of problem with the tr1 library that comes with the Microsoft compiler mixing boost functional programming libraries and tr1::function/bind, so you might want to try things out before going down this route.
6. Utilities and other Libraries
I would love to see a short section on Fusion. I have found Fusion very useful and a good alternative to using type erasure for my applications. Of course, the numerical computing I do has almost everything known at compile time which may distort my view. Also consider type_traits and enable_if, and a minimalist use of MPL to support managing overloads (mpl::and, not, if, etc.). (a huge part of the superb C++ Template Metaprogramming book is about advanced features like iterators or your own sequences, which isn't necessary for most users)