I have nothing against physicists or other C++ programmers who find templates and boost way too obscure or complex to use and choose to stick with older techniques that they know how to use effectively. [...] But what I like about boost a lot is that it adheres relatively well to a core set of principles and idioms that fit very well with my programming style. [...] I am against "polluting" boost with code that compromises these principles, because it would re-introduce difficulties that boost helps me avoid.
Do I read you correctly that you actually say templates are an essential part to every design in boost? I must admit such an approach would never occur to me, I have always thought one picks a technique applicable to the problem, and sometimes it's the 100-year old version that does the best job. "One hammer doesn't fit all screws" they say :) Lassi -- But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses. --Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"