Re: [boost] Attention Boosters

From: Stefan Seefeld (seefeld_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-12-12 08:45:41

Martin Bonner wrote:
> ----Original Message----
> From: boost-bounces_at_[hidden]
> [mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]] On Behalf Of Satoshi Fujimoto

>> So my suggestion is to make some section like "where to start?"
>> and make some pointers like....
>>
>> for C++ beginners, try shared_ptr, boost::timer, etc
> 
> I disagree.  I think most people will download boost because they have a
> particular problem to solve and hope that boost will help them solve it,
> and not because they think "I ought to use boost".  If the problem they
> have is that they neeed some sort of parser, telling them to start with
> boost::timer is just wasting their time.

I second that. I think it is important to promote boost not as a heavy monolith,
but as a set of modules. That is not only a matter of perception. I believe
it would benefit the whole project if things were handled in a more modular
way. While the technicalities of that are off-topic for this discussion, I
believe that it would help everybody if boost was perceived as a repository of
useful, but largely independent libraries.

>> for those interested in functional programming, see function, bind....
>> for those interested in numerical programming, see random, uBLAS
> 
> Of course that sort of description is useful, but not, I think, in
> "Getting Started".  By the time people get here, they have already
> decided they want to use a particular library (or libraries), and just
> want to know how to get past all the tedium of getting the libraries and
> includes in the right place.  (Remember this was the point of the
> original "Hello World" - it's a trivial program, but getting it to
> compile and execute is/was non-trivial.)

Right. And to follow up on the above theme, people continue to ask how
to set up not boost as a whole, but the parts they are interested in.
("How can I install boost.python but not boost.serialization ?", say.)

I do understand that as of boost 1.34 boost is not modular in that way,
and so the Getting Started guide should document what boost is, not what
it could be. Still, there is room to modularize boost on a perceptional
level as a start.

Thanks,
                Stefan

-- 
      ...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...