[boost] Re: Design-by-committee?

From: C. Green (postmast.root.admi.gov_at_[hidden])
Date: 1999-09-04 16:01:32

At 10:08 AM -0400 1999.09.03, Beman Dawes wrote:
>Dave Abrahams wrote:
>
>> P.S. I am concerned that this list, and the boost libraries, are now
>> suffering from "design-by-committee" syndrome, where nothing appears
>> to be acceptable unless everyone's pet issue is addressed.

[snip]

> Which is happening here?  Let's look at the results:
>
> The new (and hopefully stabilizing) version of boost/cast.hpp (just
> posted) seems less bloated and has a simpler interface than the
> earlier versions.  AFAIK, Each of the templates is in the form
> preferred by their initial authors, except that my original numeric
> casts have been replace by Kevlin's much better numeric_cast.

I don't think you get things stabilized by just talking about them until
everyone's satisfied, because their purpose *isn't* to please people. You
get things stabilized by *using* them. This means writing things for the
compiler, not the boost mailing list :-)

[snip]