Re: [Boost-users] formal review of Switch library ends tomorrow (Wednesday, January 9th) - reviews needed

From: Joel de Guzman (joel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-01-09 12:08:34

Tobias Schwinger wrote:
> Stjepan Rajko wrote:
>>     * What is your evaluation of the design?
> 
> I very much like the simplicity.
> 
> I'm not sure it really suits the name 'switch_', as I'd expect something
> syntactically different (something like Joel sketched out in his review,
> and with some argument forwarding), however, I think it's an important
> building block that should be kept as simple as possible.

I can assure you that my suggestion is "as simple as possible, but
not simpler" ;-) Simpler than that is simply not usable to me.
I know. I've been there many times. I have real world use cases
for this thing. Switch is not simple. Let's not pretend it is.

Here's an acid test for the API -- try to implement my suggested
syntax on top of the "simple" API. You'll soon realize that you
can't --without having to write the same amount of PP expansions all
over again. It's not a suitable building block, like say,
mpl::for_each.

Regards,
-- 
Joel de Guzman
http://www.boost-consulting.com
http://spirit.sf.net