Re: [Boost] [Describe] Summary Review Summary

From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2021-03-26 07:23:56

On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 7:35 AM Jeff Garland via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> > The committee seems to be concerned more with internal and external
> > politics than with serving the community. If that wasn't true there
would
> > be ZERO library additions that haven't been battle hardened by being
> > deployed and established themselves as the defacto standard already.
>
> Unlike the boost review where there's 'a decider', the committee uses
> consensus.  It's a much higher bar, as frankly, it should be.

A "much higher bar" can prevent a good library from being accepted or
prevent a bad library from being rejected. That is, consensus cuts both
ways.

> As for battle hardened, sometimes it's not quite so simple as sometimes
> language changes are needed or vendor support is needed.  Every proposal
> gets vetted for usage experience and it's clear that without experience
> it's unlikely to go forward.  Is the process perfect -- no.  Will it make
> everyone, even the members happy -- no.  Can it be improved -- surely --
> but like many things in life it's not as simple as we'd like.

We can talk about the case when language changes are needed but let's focus
on libraries.

> > The only thing they should be doing is rubber-stamping libraries that
are
> > already the standard for doing something.
>
> And if we 'just did that', things like generic programming wouldn't exist
> in c++.  If the 'Roque Wave' container design was adopted in 1998 the
world
> would be very different now.

There was no GitHub in 1998. Today it feels like some authors treat the
standard library as a vehicle for making their library available everywhere
in hopes it'll get adopted. All I'm saying is that adoption should come
before standardization. Git pull requests are better than Subversion
commits.

> And if you want one of those 'battle hardened' libraries
> adopted, that's fine

You see, I think it is problematic to "want" to standardize a library. IMO
the standardization process should be dull and boring, rather than driven
by exciting innovation.