Re: [boost] Why use Boost?

From: Brian Allison (brian_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-03 08:26:37

   Orjan Westin wrote:

Paul Giaccone wrote:

Some comments from a boost newbie/C++ old hand here.

  

Contrary to what some have said, Boost *does* need to be sold.
    

Well, that statement can mean a lot of things, but I believe you mean that
it is not, as currently presented, attractive to new-comers.

I hope you don't mean that it needs to be sold in an evangeligal manner. :-)

Since the stated aim is to establish "existing practice", that's probably
the best way of selling it, too.

      Can someone intelligently define for me what is being meant here by
   "evangelism"? I had thought it was the act of building a bridge for someome
   from their current world view to a different world view.
     1) Why is there an apparant ignorance that this is not intrinsically a Bad
   Thing, when each of you started out as an infant without knowledge of the
   good/evil status of such bridge building? Am I observing some internal fear,
   or am I frighteningly ignorant of the proper use of the word "evangelism"?
   Or perhaps the world "charlatan" should be used?
     2) If my understanding of 'evangelism' is correct - and please don't start
   talking religion to me, just stick to the word - then isn't that what is
   required to give someone a chance to see something in an attractive light
   which due to preconceived notions (of ignorance) they were before only able
   to see as something ugly?
     I thought I had evangelized a prior roommate who insisted to me that C++
   was a Bad Idea, and that C could suffice for any program. By the end of the
   discussion he admitted that C++ could be useful, and a few weeks later he
   admitted that it was in fact useful in many intances.
     But I was neither brainwashing, nor was I being a charlatan and claiming
   that it'd <miracle of choice> for him. I was in fact evangelizing C++ to
   him.