Re: Mother of all Variants

From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-07-03 12:36:50

On Tue, Jul 2, 2019 at 7:19 PM Nevin Liber via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]>
wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 7:41 PM Robert Ramey via Boost <
> boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> > Here you've exactly hit on the motivation for mother of all variants.
> >
> > It should be clear by now that as library developers we cannot correctly
> > anticipate the needs and desires of our potential users and at the same
> > time document the rational and restrictions of the particular variant in
> > question.
>
>
> That is true about every type in existence.  Variant is not special in
this
> regard.
>
> And if "we cannot correctly anticipate the needs and desires of our
> potential users", policies also "cannot correctly
> anticipate the needs and desires of our potential users" either.  Policies
> do not solve this problem.

+1

Worse, policy-based designs are the result of the expert in the problem
domain (the library author), unable to make up his mind about the library
design, pushing that responsibility to people who are less knowledgeable
(the library users).