Re: Technical Excellence?

From: Jeff Garland (azswdude_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-04-02 15:58:23

On Wed, Mar 27, 2024 at 11:53 PM Matt Borland via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

>
> One of the big pushes for C++26 is BLAS. I'll bet if you look hard enough
> you can find a box of FORTRAN punch cards with a reference implementation
> on it. Because it's not new is not valuable? There is still quite a bit of
> research going on in the problem space: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.10173.

I'll just note that BLAS is 'already done' in c++26

https://eel.is/c++draft/linalg.algs.blas1
https://eel.is/c++draft/linalg.algs.blas2

Like special math functions, many applications won't need these tools, but
if you do it's super handy not to have to wrap some other library or
Fortran itself.

The users of boost are looking to solve whatever problem they are paid/want
> to solve. Offering novel components is cool and all, but offering
> well-engineered solutions to pervasive and mundane problems (like parsing
> numbers or matrix algebra) is valuable in it's own right.
>

Exactly.  And one old phrase is that the committee should be 'standardizing
existing practice'.  This is standardizing decades old research and
development.

Jeff