[boost] Re: Math constants - updated.

From: Deane Yang (deane_yang_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-05-16 11:02:50

Kevin Lynch wrote:
> Deane Yang wrote:
> 
> I unfortunately have seen this opposition too, although not on the boost 
> list.  I've mostly encountered it from my colleagues who are physicists 
> first, and use code as a tool, but couldn't care less about actually 
> learning current idioms.
> 
....
> 
> Make no mistake ... these are very, very smart people saying these 
> things.  But like most of us, they just can't or won't be bothered to 
> invest energy in keeping up with current trends in areas outside their 
> fields of expertise.

As some recent postings to this list have indicated, it is probably true 
that MOST C++ programmers, and not just the physicists, avoid templates 
and the idioms used and promoted by boost.

On the other hand, the boost libraries have never, as far as I can tell, 
compromised on interfaces to accommodate programmers who don't like 
templates or modern C++ idioms. Why should the constants library be any 
different? Why should boost give physicists special consideration that 
most C++ programmers do not get?

> 
> That all said, I don't put much weight on the opinions of practitioners 
> who fail to keep current or to understand why things are the way they 
> are.  Boost should "do the right thing".  The users who complain will 
> follow along after a time, because they'll have no choice ... their 
> tools will change out from under them, and their graduate students will 
> roll their eyes and force them to adapt to the modern idioms.  We 
> shouldn't be held back by the whiners ... if we did, the projects I work 
> on would still be writing all our data acquisition and analysis code in 
> Fortran IV  :-)

Amen!