David Abrahams wrote:
"David Bergman" <davidb@home.se> writes:
David Abrahams wrote:
Oliver Kullmann <O.Kullmann@swansea.ac.uk> writes:
[snip...]
The exciting thing about Boost is that it is Avantgarde, a
good deal of interesting research(!), and not compromising on
quality. That's at least my understanding of Boost.
Boost only is so by the extent of its reach/familarity - ie it really is a matter of exposure; any other consideration of Boost is really a matter perception. What is exciting about Boost is the exploration into new avenues - the overwhelming desire to do better, and chart unexplored teritory; the MPL, Fusion or the Boost.PP are such examples; and then there is the level of quality output and constant peer review - discussions beyond the text book. -That's what makes Boost exciting.
We don't want to be Avantgarde/research; to the extent that we are, we need to fix it.
I agree with that, unless one replaces the "Avantgarde/research" with "for experts." I.e., I want Boost to remain a choice for C++ experts.
I believe the waters have become muddied here - I'm going to go out on a limb here and hazard a guess that the intended statement was that we don't want to compramise on the quality of Boost - and I don't think that will ever happen. To an extent, the Boost community is a collective for the advancement of the language (whence research), and a worthy advocate and signpost to the rest of the world to advertise the worth of the language - our signposts just need to be bigger - otherwise Boost withers.
We never wanted to be the sole province of experts. We always wanted widespread usage. If you want to be a member of an exclusive "experts" club this is the wrong place to find it.
Agreed. If Boost were ever to be the province of experts it would defeat its very purpose - namely to grow and flourish throughout the C++ community; to be an example and a leader in modern C++ method, design, and direction.
[snip...]
What I am saying is that it would not be unreasonable to expect the targeted developers to actually type 'bjam', and perhaps even set the proper environment variables.
It would be unreasonable for some of them. I've worked with quite advanced and competent developers who are only comfortable in an IDE.
I sympathize. I only work on the command line (Unix / Linux). I could never work with an IDE, and if I had too I'd be lost - so in the same vein, I am sure those not comfortable with command line tools are just as lost as I, when set in front of an IDE. -Boost needs to better cater for their needs, it's a sad reality, but too many coders out there don't live on the command line.
I do not think we have to flirt with the masses
Too late ;-)
Indeed ;-) And again I stress, if we don't Boost dies - and none of us wants that.
- developers that would not use the facilities found in Boost anyway - in order to position it better for incorporation into future C++ standardizations.
Yes, we do. We need maximal adoption in order to be best positioned for standardization. Not just to get the libraries accepted, but also so they are really deserving of standardization.
Again, well said. my $0.02 Cheers, -- Manfred Doudar MetOcean Engineers www.metoceanengineers.com