Re: [boost] Re: Proposal: Design patterns library

From: David A. Greene (greened_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-04-09 21:02:32

Javier Estrada wrote:

> I support Gennadiy's opinion.  Although Loki makes great advances towards
> generalizing design patterns, there are just too many forces that need to be
> considered, and tweaking that little thing that someone needs is too
> complicated for a generic library.  Granted that policy based design, as
> portrayed in Loki, alleviates several of the concerns, but not all of them.
> Besides, design patterns is more about reusing a design, not necessarily
> code.

I disagree strongly with this.  Certainly some patterns have too many
variations or "little tweaks" that need to happen but others seem to
do ok -- smart_ptr is one example (and yes, I'm aware of the long-winded
arguments about merging Loki smart pointers into Boost).

I believe there is enough "general" usage out there to warrant including
common patterns in Boost.  If a project has special needs, then that
project should not necessarily try to shoehorn a component from a
generic library.  A generic library should not try to please all parties
equally.  I would have dearly loved to have had Loki generic visitors
years ago.

Gennadiy is right that PETAL doesn't cover the kind of things we'd
like to see in Boost (I particularly like the "sliceability" of Loki
abstract factories) but that doesn't go against the general idea of
a generic pattern library.

                            -Dave

-- 
"Some little people have music in them, but Fats, he was all music,
  and you know how big he was."  --  James P. Johnson