On 2 Jun 2015 at 23:18, Phil Endecott wrote:
christophe.j.henry@gmail.com wrote:
I feel I have to slightly steer the review in the right (IMO) direction, which means in the direction where the review is based on the quality of the library and documentation, not on pure formalities.
I agree with your steering direction.
So let me ask a question: how useful is this library in practice, beyond "toy examples"?
Was this library developed with a real application, i.e. use in a product, as its motivation, or was it written to test the limits of what is possible using metaprogramming?
I think back before the C++ 11 STL the question of usefulness was more important than now as Boost becomes more heterogeneous. I note how many reviewers of Metaparse said they are not experts in that field, or would even expect to use Metaparse any time soon themselves. It's like with Edward's VMD library. I still cannot see the point of it. But others said it was useful to their niche cases, and VMD was clearly well designed, well tested, well polished and would be well maintained with Edward as maintainer. So I felt it was a good addition to Boost despite me personally not getting its point. In other words, I think we're moving from an era of "many need this so we'll build it" into an era of "I think this is cool, so I'll build it and if one or two other people come to use it then great". If I am right on that, it has profound consequences on what Boost is and how it works going into the future, especially as there is little incentive to buy into individual ivory towers from a user's perspective if that tower is locked into its maintainer. Niall -- ned Productions Limited Consulting http://www.nedproductions.biz/ http://ie.linkedin.com/in/nialldouglas/