RE: [boost] Re: Customer Friendlier Boost Installation

From: David Bergman (davidb_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-05-25 20:05:32

David Abrahams wrote: 

> Oliver Kullmann <O.Kullmann_at_[hidden]> writes:
> 
> > But for these "millions of C++ users" Boost is not the right choice.
> 
> It should be.

Oliver was talking about those millions of C++ users that "see no benefit in
smart pointers", "see MPL as black art" etc. Right, Oliver? I really hope
that Boost will not try to fit the needs of those less experienced
developers, since that will, IMHO, inevitably make the library less useful
for those of us who actually do type "make -k" now and then...
 
> > The exciting thing about Boost is that it is Avantgarde, a 
> good deal 
> > of interesting research(!), and not compromising on 
> quality. That's at 
> > least my understanding of Boost.
> 
> We don't want to be Avantgarde/research; to the extent that 
> we are, we need to fix it.

I agree with that, unless one replaces the "Avantgarde/research" with "for
experts." I.e., I want Boost to remain a choice for C++ experts.

Most of those "millions of C++ users" that Oliver is refering to are
actually quite junior C developers who have been forced to use some C++
keywords and OOP in order to exploit MFC instead of raw Win32 programming.
And those developers already have MFC and ATL, and would probably only use
'shared_ptr' from Boost.

What I am saying is that it would not be unreasonable to expect the targeted
developers to actually type 'bjam', and perhaps even set the proper
environment variables.

I do not think we have to flirt with the masses - developers that would not
use the facilities found in Boost anyway - in order to position it better
for incorporation into future C++ standardizations.

/David Bergman