Re: [boost] ANN: POCO - C++ Portable Components

From: Guenter Obiltschnig (guenter.obiltschnig_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-07-21 05:14:13

Hi,

On Jul 20, 2006, at 19:53 , Roman Morokutti wrote:

> Hi Steven,
>
> as you quoted, the STL lacks. But it ever has has been thought of
> a general purpose library. My thoughts were that POCO is a bit a clone
> of ACE and was not intended to discuss the pros and cons of the
> STL. (Let´s open this book on a separate Thread ;-))
>
> So, whats the main difference between POCO and ACE?

Well, I wouldn't exactly see POCO as a clone of ACE. There may be  
some similarities and minor influences (design pattern wise), but  
POCO has been designed without looking at ACE as a role model, or  
whatever.

Why POCO? Well, there is a nice article at the project's weblog  
(http://appinf.com/poco/blog/?p=4), written by one of our contributors.

Basically, POCO is the library I always wanted to have for C++. While  
I prefer C++ to Java and .NET (for me, Java and C# just don't feel  
right...), the main envy I have of them is the extensive class  
library that they come with. I wanted to have something similar for C+ 
+. And I wanted something that's easy and fun to use. Even if I have  
to compromise some (but not much) flexibility for it. I guess it's  
similar to Ruby-on-Rails vs. J2EE. While J2EE is certainly more  
powerful and flexible, RoR programming is much more fun, and you get  
most things done faster, too. Getting things done fast - I guess  
that's one of the main ideas behind POCO.

I never really looked at ACE. I always found the 20M download kind of  
intimidating. And for some reason it always had this 'early 90's C++  
touch' for me. This might not be true anymore, I don't know, and I  
really don't care.

With software, I guess, it's with all the other things in life. There  
is no one thing that fits everyone. So there are lots of developers  
that prefer Boost or ACE. There are also some (already) that prefer  
POCO. And there are many that prefer something else entirely. A lot  
of personal taste, experience, preferences are involved in the choice  
of our tools. Otherwise we would all drive the same car, or use the  
same programming language. The world is not that way. Fortunately.

Best regards,

Guenter

--
Günter Obiltschnig                   Applied Informatics
guenter.obiltschnig_at_[hidden]     http://www.appinf.com
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