Re: [boost] New library proposal: Autodiff

Subject: Re: [boost] New library proposal: Autodiff
From: John Maddock (jz.maddock_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-12-19 20:33:38

>
>>     - C++17 compiler that supports constexpr if statements. There are a fair
>>     amount of calculations done at compile-time which would require messy
>>     SFINAE hacks to make this C++14-compatible.
> I know my position is unpopular, but I don't think this is a good
> tradeoff. Supporting C++11 certainly requires more work on the
> author's part but that is a finite investment. The return on this is a
> practically unbounded amount of utility, as the number of users is
> normally expected to greatly outnumber the amount of authors (1 in
> this case). In fact you could argue that there is infinite utility in
> laboring to produce "messy SFINAE hacks", because otherwise users of
> C++14 and C++11 cannot use the library at all. Most users only care
> that the library works, and are unaffected by the particulars of the
> sausage-making.
>
> In general, I feel like it is a good engineering practice for Boost
> libraries to only require C++14 or C++17 when absolutely necessary. In
> this case it does not seem necessary. This year's developer surveys
> indicate that C++11 has the most widespread use:

I get that, and haven't looked in detail at the code yet, but for the 
record, for Math heavy code, "if constexpr" is probably more useful than 
anything else in C++11 and 14.... the next "biggy" is C++20's 
is_constant_evaluated which is likely to make a lot of things that can't 
quite be fully constexpr yet, more or less possible in the future 
(Boost.Multiprecision for one).

John.

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