[boost] Boost engine: my two words

From: luca regini (luca.regini_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-07-24 16:10:06

I am writing because i have seen many words spent about a "boost
engine" as a way to promote boost. I am an average programmer involved
in real life consulting for some big bank firms in Italy and i would
like to share my humble point of view. One of the main markets that
drives the success of a language is that of enterprise applications.
Today the market of enterprise application has moved from desktop and
client-server systems to three-tier web applications , so the surge of
garbage collected languages like java and c#. In my opinion the
success of these languages is strongly depends on the fact that they
provide a standard programming environment with a standard library
which is very rich in functionality. As today C++ miss a freely
available library that compares to the library of java or .NET. True
you can find libraries for almost every kind of needs one has, but
what is missing is a freely available, complete and coherent library
with all the functionality one can find in these languages. Boost
success is also due to the fact that it sets a standard for C++, that
it contains a coherent sets of libraries and that it covers some of
what is already available in other languages. Anyway i see that still
boost miss some pieces that are very important for enterprise
applications: for example a logging library and a database library. A
synchronous networking library could also be needed by some
applications. I believe that any effort to promote boost could be
better spent on developing this kind of enteprise code.
Regards,
Luca