Re: [boost] Interest in super string class?

From: Jody Hagins (jody-boost-011304_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-07-05 18:44:58

I'm the one asking YOU for reasons why immutable interfaces should be
used over mutable ones ;-)  You are the one making a proposal in favor
of immutable interfaces.  Aside from being able to represent the
functional paradigm in C++, what are the benefits from your point of
view?  I've read several papers, and I've used several similar
libraries, but I want your experience stories because I respect your
talent and experience.

Why should the interfaces for string (or other boost libraries) be
immutable?  I am unaware of an immutable implementation that provides
transparent performance cost.  I'd be most interested if you know of
one.

BTW, just for a fun story, working in the kernel and in certain parts of
the government, I've learned that benchmarks mean almost nothing, unless
you REALLY know all the details of what is going on.  One of my first
jobs as a kernel developer was to improve performance of our scheduler. 
I was able to find a few clever optimizations, but the best one was to
"configure" the system for the type of operations being run and change
the scheduling policy to something that favored the "recognized pattern"
which ended up putting our product at the very top of every
price/performance index available.  Special code for tests is against
the rules, and we certainly did not do that.  However, you are allowed
to configure the kernel, in any documented manner.  You are also allowed
to "recognize" certain patterns and change behavior in response to those
execution patterns.  Recognizing the interesting characteristics of
those benchmarks were pretty simple (and could reasonably be justified
as recognizing a class of program characteristics common to industry
usage).