On Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 18:51 Robert Ramey via Boost <boost@lists.boost.org> wrote: <...>
b) The standards committee has ramped up it's efforts to include library proposals directly into the standard - thus side stepping the traditional requirement of "standardizing established practice". So this has left Boost, which helps to evolve "establish practice" outside of the development of the C++. An example of this has been the Ranges library which as been designed and developed totally within confines of the C++ standards committee. This effectively marginalizes Boost - that is, makes it less relevant and important.
Ranges is a very popular library. It is still an "existing practice", but that practice is not from Boost. Here's a crazy idea - include into Boost all the prototypes that were accepted into C++. This will keep the Boost important and usefull. Users will be able to find all the upcomming libraries in one place. c) This effort by the committee is basically failing. It's creating the
possibility that C++ will evolve into an ever larger and incomprehensible bag of disjoint features than it already is. It makes it much harder to learn C++. This puts C++ on a slow train to oblivion. This is not unusual with successful projects which expand their scope - as the committee has done. It's especially common for organizations run as a committee. Think large corporations: Kodak, Sears, All government organizations, universities - etc.
I always tell people - do not put efforts into complaining, put efforts into fixing things. If you see that features do not interact well - write a paper and propose a fix. All one has to do to see this is look at the papers list for the San
Diego meeting. Also look at P0977r0. Consider that it take the committee 10 years for a proposal to evolve into something that can be delivered to users. It even takes 10 years to include something which is already in use by 100's of thousands of programmers - ASIO.
Let's be honest. 10 years of evolution made Networking TS better. Take a look at all the changes with const_buffer_1, allocators ... It's worth it. Of course the C++ committee won't address the situation. Committees
don't do that. They think they can remain relevant by expanding scope. and lo and behold, now they want to expand scope again to include tooling. Wake up and smell the coffee people. Learn to prioritize and limit the scope of your actions to that which only you can do. This would be better for C++. Do less - get more done!
Committee become bigger. More people could process more papers and deal with bigger scopes. d) Boost can accept, review and deliver a new library in a year. Hence
Boost has a reason to continue and exist. But Boost is also a committee - albeit a better designed one. It has to evolve as well. I think it can evolve if we continue to work on the stuff we've been successful at while at the same time experimenting with new ideas.
+1. I'm really interested in having all the C++2x prototypes in Boost. Looks like everyone would benefit from that. Is that a reasonable idea?