Re: [boost] Why use Boost?

From: Paul Giaccone (paulg_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-03 05:00:53

Arkadiy Vertleyb wrote:

>"Paul Giaccone" <paulg_at_[hidden]> wrote
>  
>
>>"Essentially, Boost needs to sell itself as something that no C++
>>programmer would want to be without. Think how the adman would write it:
>>"C++ getting you down? Spending hours tracking down that memory leak?
>>Then try Boost! It will change your life!" Well, maybe not, but
>>something along these lines would certainly go a long way to showing why
>>anyone should be using Boost.
>>    
>>
>
>While I completely agree, I can't help but mention that people fluent in
>this kind of language are rarely found among those involved into open source
>development :-)
>  
>
Quite, so the trick is getting hold of those who have both the 
development skills (or rather, an intimate understanding of the 
libraries) and the language skills and asking them to write the 
documentation.  I intend no disrespect to any of the developers, but 
isn't there an unwritten principle in program development that the 
developer shouldn't write the documentation because they are too close 
to the code to understand what the user requires from the docs?  Ideally 
(and I stress "ideally", before anyone points out the impracticalities) 
there would be a Boost "superdeveloper" with knowledge of all the 
libraries and good writing skills who would write documentation for 
*all* the libraries, making it of uniform readability, usability and 
value to the user.

Paul