Re: [boost] metactrl header [compile time asserts]

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-07-25 16:04:14

David Abrahams wrote:

 >BTW, I attended a Generic Programming conference with C&E in '98
 >http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~musser/gp/dagstuhl/gpdag.html where they talked
 >about
 >generative programming. Most of it seemed to be a pile of buzzwords and
 >excitement with little to back it up, but they did present a complete 
lisp
 >interpreter implemented at compile-time with C++ templates!

Not everybody needs to design reusable systems with a great deal of 
variability.  But for those that do, generative programming seems to have 
some real benefits, including:

* Design techniques to deal with the variability, and without needing to 
learn a complex methodology or use special design software.

* C++ implementation within the language (although certainly stretching 
templates to the limit).

* Eases the use of highly variable features by specifying only desired 
properties, and letting the generator do the rest of the configuration 
work.

* Makes it easier to detect configuration errors (because of the ability to 
deal with error detection in the generator rather than in the final 
product.)

* Seems to be easy to learn and use.  The book helps this a great deal.

--Beman