Re: [boost] Why use Boost?

From: Brian Allison (brian_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-03 07:59:40

   David Abrahams wrote:

"Andy Little" [1]<andy_at_[hidden]> writes:

"David Maisonave"  wrote

What's the point of creating a great class, if only a handfull of
developers ues it, because the majority have no idea how to use it?

You cant escape the fact that writing documentation is the most tedious, rotten
,
boring, miserable, mind-numbing job imaginable ***.

I disagree.  Finding the right way to explain something deepens one's
own understanding of it and -- very often -- uncovers real problems
with the design.  I think the skills required are really essential to
becoming a great software designer.  If you give it the time it
deserves and treat it as part of the process rather than just
something to do after you've written the code, it can even be
enjoyable.

     I agree, though I was dragged kicking and screaming into agreement by
   experiences of the past few years. It's one thing to explain a design to
   other people who are already familiar with the topic (but not intimately
   so), but explaining how to use a functional language interpreter to someone
   whose programming expertise has been on-the-fly gawk scripting... the design
   of both the language and the interpreter has to become far more elegant than
   if I were explaining it to another person with my background. (Just try
   explaining to someone who's used to Perl/gawk why the new script language
   has no variables.)
     In fact I find consistently that if a design is elegant, then it's far
   more enjoyable to have explained it - whether in a TeX file or verbally -
   and the act of explaining forces me into knowing the topic better than
   before.
   (ObPhilo:  I think that's because there's something that intrinsically
   beautiful about asymptotically exact invariant observations - I mean "good
   design".)
     As a novice to Boost, I'd offer to help out with the documentation except
   that not only are the next 6 to 8 weeks are bad timing for starting any
   projects  like  this,  but  I'm  also  notoriously  slow at generating
   documentation. I'll keep an eye on this thread though, and if things resolve
   themselves favorably for me then I could see myself offering to help.

References

   1. mailto:andy_at_[hidden]