Re: [boost] usage of auto in tutorials

Subject: Re: [boost] usage of auto in tutorials
From: Stephan Menzel (stephan.menzel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-03-19 19:38:24

On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 4:49 PM Andrzej Krzemienski via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

>
> There two sides to it. Yes, it is good to highlight new language features,
> and how they can be used.
> But it may conflict with the objectives of a tutorial, especially the
> initial page: the potential user should get the picture how (s)he will be
> using the library, as fast as possible.

Yes, this is exactly my point. I may have been unclear about this, given
this thread. I am not advocating in favor or against any new language
feature. Trainling return types, auto, whatever. Tutorials may show that.
But the initial page has the purpose of showing at a glance what the lib is
about and reach as many as possible. This is best achieved by a low common
denominator.

This may be the matter of seconds.
> If we put off the potential user too much in this step, (s)he is likely to
> drop our library and go to the competition or go to manually write a
> similar (but lower quality) tool because determining whether our library
> does what is needed took too long.
>

Well, truth be told, I was on the verge. The most recent new lib I planned
to adopt was spirit 3x, as I am a long time user of spirit 2 and wanted to
see how the new one rolls. So I had a look and quickly found out that
spirit 3x is done in a way that it essentially requires the use of auto. No
reasonable way around it. And since auto is banned in my department, I had
to abandon 3x. Which isn't too bad per se but when I briefly glanced over
the outcome tutorial my first impression was "Oh, another one of those auto
only libs...". I did realize my mistake quickly but it kinda proves your
point to me. Which is why I wrote.

Cheers,
Stephan