[boost] [proto] Review

From: Noah Stein (noah_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-03-28 03:59:16

I wish I could have spent much more time with Eric’s library. I think it
addresses a very important niche in the world of C++ libraries. This library
could save me countless hours in the future. Even though I didn’t get as
much time with the library as I’d hoped, I vote to accept it.

 

 

- What is your evaluation of the design?

 

The design is well thought out. I must admit that using it wasn’t as
straightforward as I thought it would be. I believe that is not due to poor
design. I believe it is fundamentally a result of Eric really trying to
create a library that is ambitious and is really trying to provide an
extensive set of features and functionality for library authors.

 

 

- What is your evaluation of the implementation?

 

I didn’t look too deeply into the guts of the implementation, only in so far
as I was getting errors in my attempts to use the library. Unfortunately,
the library is complex. There’s no way around it. I just didn’t have the
time to dig too extensively under the hood.

 

 

- What is your evaluation of the documentation?

 

I don’t want to say that it was lacking, but for me this was the weakest
aspect of a very strong library. The documentation is very good at what it
covers. It does cover all the parts of the library. Each concept is covered
in a good amount of detail. I hate to leave it at that, but I’ve been at
this bullet point for 10 minutes now trying to figure out how to express
what I want to say. Unfortunately, it’s 1:00 AM, and I need to be up in 4
hours. I’ll try to put something together this weekend or early next week to
cover what I’m thinking.

 

 

- What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library?

 

Extremely useful.

 

 

- Did you try to use the library?  With what compiler?  Did you have any
problems?

 

I played around with implementing a class using proto. The environment was
MSVC2005. I had zero problems compiling the examples or using the libraries.

 

 

- How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick
reading? In-depth study?

 

  I read the documentation 3 or 4 times over the course of a few days. I
spent 5 hours or so compiling the examples and working on implementing my
own class with the library.

 

 

- Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?

 

I think I’m sufficiently knowledgeable about the domain. I’ve implemented
expression trees for a vector-matrix library in the past. Knowing how much
effort it was to write that for a single domain without implementing
expression transforms, I understand the tremendous effort that went into
creating a generic system.

 

 

I really think Eric has done a great job. He’s clearly put in a tremendous
amount of thought into proto. Clearly, it’s been a lot of time. Having
worked on Spirit in the past, I’m sure that it’s put proto through the fire
already. If it can handle Spirit and the diversity of examples in the
documentation, Eric’s done a fine job of making a solid DSEL library.

 

 

-- Noah

No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG. 
Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.1/1346 - Release Date: 3/27/2008
10:03 AM