[review][JSON] RJanson's review

From: Janson R. (mlists.aerostun_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-09-22 10:41:17

This is a review from a library user standpoint.
Thanks to Vinnie, Krystian, and the other contributors for their work.

 > Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library?

I recommend ACCEPTING this library into Boost.

 >  - What is your evaluation of the design?

The design takes some time to get used to, but it fits well to the 
problem being tackled (a JSON-DOM library).
Switching my codebases using RapidJSON to this library made the code 
more readable and it will also allow me to get rid of a significant 
amount of boilerplate.

 >  - What is your evaluation of the implementation?

Looks solid. Boost-quality I find.

 >  - What is your evaluation of the documentation?

Solid. A month ago I still had to read the source code to find some 
details, but now all I need for my use-cases is in the docs, well explained.

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

Very useful; to me it takes the same place as Nlohmann.JSON and 
RapidJSON, both very popular and widely used libraries, but brings 
better performance and a better API.
Regardless of the outcome of this review, I will use this library for my 
future JSON-DOM needs in C++.

 >  - Did you try to use the library? With which compiler(s)?

All in standalone mode on Debian:
GCC 9, 10
Clang 9, 10, 11 [trunk of 03 Jul 2020]

 >  - How much effort did you put into your evaluation?

Converted two of my codebases (which have different use-cases for a 
JSON-DOM), read through the implementation, read the docs at multiple 
stages of its maturation over the last couple months.
Amounts to about 40h.

 >  - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?

I do not have much experience designing nor writing libraries, however I 
do use a significant number of them, both Boost and non-Boost.
JSON is my primary format for configuration files and web communication; 
In the past I have used Nlohmann.JSON and then primarily RapidJSON for 
its speed, despite its (in my eyes) terribly user-unfriendly interface.
I have also used JSON a lot in other languages (TypeScript, PureScript, 
Java).

-- RJanson