Re: [boost] Process discussions

Subject: Re: [boost] Process discussions
From: Matthias Schabel (boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-31 12:04:19

> I'm with John here. And I can say this: we, the top commiters have no
> complaints about the tools. We will use whatever tools are available.
> (at least I speak for Hartmut, John, Volodya and I; but I have a strong
> feeling that Steven and Daniel agree too).

One should recognize here that there is a strong form of self-selection
happening; the "top committers" are those individuals who have the 
desire/motivation/incentive to spend a substantial fraction of their 
professional and/or personal time refining their knowledge of the 
details of Boost. For someone who is a Boost consultant (several of
whom appear at the top of the aforementioned list) this is clearly
a worthwhile investment and, in fact, having a complex tool chain
and difficult to master systems is advantageous in that it increases
the potential demand for consulting work. A simpler and easier-to-
understand tool chain would presumably lower barriers to entry and
increase participation from individuals 

>  A Good Craftsman Never Blames His Tools
> 
> And I think what Volodya meant is that more than anyone else, it is
> us who are in the position to determine if we are using the right tool
> or whether the tools are making us effective. And... hmmm, I think
> we are effective ;-)

Speaking from personal experience, I would almost certainly not have 
been able to persevere long enough to see Boost.Units
through to completion - without Steven's deep knowledge of the Boost
build system and C++ in general, my ability to define an appropriate 
architecture for dimensional analysis and establish expectations for 
its function would have been stymied by my inability to achieve a 
"professional" implementation. I won't speak for Steven, but I guess that
it is unlikely that he would have produced that library on his own, either.
The proliferation of "toy" dimensional analysis libraries (c.f. MPL library
examples) attests to that.

Matthias