Re: [boost] Review of Interval Template Library (ITL) for inclusion

Subject: Re: [boost] Review of Interval Template Library (ITL) for inclusion
From: Joachim Faulhaber (afojgo_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-02-25 03:07:47

Hi Eric,

thank you for your very positive assessment on my library. I am particularly
happy that your experiences with my library were so helpful to you in your
very demanding problem domain and that the ITL proved of value in another
complex real world application.

2010/2/25 Eric Jonas <jonas_at_[hidden]>

> At the outset, I want to say that I enthusiastically support the
> inclusion of this library in Boost. I also encourage others without a
> specific application in mind to check out the library, as there are a
> lot of fun examples that you might later find useful in other coding
> projects.
>
> My Background
> --------------
>
> My background: I develop combined hardware and software systems for
> recording from high-throughput neural systems. One of the primary
> challenges we face with such systems is the aggressive demands that 10
> GB/hour of time-series data places on a typical workstation when you
> want to visualize it -- especially in real time, with appropriate
> historical context, at multiple zoom levels.
>
> I wrestled with this problem for a great deal of time before settling
> on various rendering and caching mechanisms. But the number one
> challenge was efficiently representing the temporal regions that had
> been viewed, those that had been rendered, and those that had been
> cached. Then I needed to propagate this state information through a
> complex dataflow pipeline.
>
> ITL solved this problem for me, in a way that honestly freed me from
> having to think about a lot of the unsavory low-level details.
>
> Specifics
> ------------
>
> All of my work has been on Linux with a modern (4.3+) gcc. I have had
> collaborators build and use the resulting artifacts on OS X.
>
> I originally only anticipated needing interval_sets, but interval_maps
> became extremely useful as I started to keep track of metadata in my
> timing epochs.
>
> The segregation of interval_* and split_interval_*, while not
> necessary for my application, provides historical context that I can
> imagine being useful in some scenarios.
>
>
> What is your evaluation of the documentation?
> ---------------------------------------------
>
> I'd say the documentation was "Boost-quality", but some might see that
>  as pejorative :)

=)

> The tutorial had me up and running quickly, and the
> extensive examples helped me map my ideas to the library's primitives.
>
>
> How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick
> reading? In-depth study?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I have used this library in production code that I have shipped to
> users, and have been working with it for several months.
>
> What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> For my applications, it was crucial -- they would have been far less
> optimal (both from a software-engineering and asymptotic perspective)
> without ITL. The examples showcase a wider range of potential
> applications, especially the use of an example "Project" as a more
> complex example.
>
>
> Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> As a consumer of many boost libraries for many years, from the simple
> (shared_tr) to more esoteric (variant) to completely crazy (fusion), I
> feel like I have a good sense of modern C++ API aesthetic. As someone
> who spends a great deal (too much) of his life working with
> time-series data structures, I am familiar with many of the underlying
> algorithms and data-structures.
>
>
>
Thank you again. I hope there are more users "out there" to whom is my work
so helpful.

Cheers,
Joachim