Thanks Francisco, You inspired me to engage with and respond thoughtfully to Peter. Thank you for that! I graduated Computer Science in 1994. I did some lecturing later, those indeed were the days. Mentoring is indeed something worth some investment. - Nigel On Thu, May 21, 2026 at 7:16 PM Francisco José Tapia via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:
---------- Forwarded message --------- De: Nigel Stewart <nigels.com@gmail.com> Date: mié, 20 may 2026 a las 13:14 Subject: Re: [boost] Re: Proposing statsort for Boost.Sort To: Francisco José Tapia <fjtapia@gmail.com>
Francisco,
Thank you so much for saying what needed to be said, and diplomatically.
More interesting as a research result perhaps, than for real-world production use. At least so far.
- Nigel
On Wed, May 20, 2026 at 6:45 PM Francisco José Tapia via Boost <boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:
Hello,
maybe I didn’t explain myself clearly about how the library works.
Once you add an algorithm to the library, you can’t remove it later, even if it’s surpassed by newer algorithms, because there are software
programs
and companies that are using it.
Hello,
Thank you Nigel for your message.
Behind my words there is a very clear idea and intention. The results of Peter's algorithm are not good enough to be included in the library. However, his work has my full respect and consideration.
Doing something new, breaking new ground where no one has gone before, without knowing clearly whether it leads anywhere, is hard work and, on many occasions, emotionally exhausting. When you are in that situation, even if the result is not what was expected, it is very rewarding to have your effort recognised and valued. That is talent in its purest form.
If you take the engineers from the best companies in the world and ask them whether they have done something new, something that has never been done before — whether successful or not — I assure you that very few would remain. That is the kind of talent that is so often talked about and so little understood. Meaningful talent, not nominal talent, nor talent by position or education.
At Boost we are a club of geeks, although our manners disguise it and we may come across as conventional people. We have many people whom I sincerely admire for their talent, their vision and their work, and I can assure you that my admiration is not given lightly.
We — companies, the world — need people who, like us, like Peter, blaze a trail.
The important thing is to keep moving forward. Peter did not succeed on the first attempt; perhaps on the second, something might emerge from his mind that leaves us astonished, and it will be a pleasure to welcome him and other people with new ideas.
Looking at him, I see myself, when I joined Boost and proposed a library for creating concurrent sets, multisets, maps and multimaps, allowing multiple threads to work on them concurrently in a safe manner. It was not well received, I suppose due to my clumsiness in presenting it. I ended up in the Sort library, with sorting algorithms that I developed for that library.
That is why Peter and people like him matter to me, because they are the hope. For that very reason I am firm in my ideas, but I try to be careful, kind, and to acknowledge the value of that effort.
What needs to be done and how to do it I have learned over my more than 30 years of teaching Computer Science. That is all.
Yours sincerely,
Francisco Tapia
fjtapia@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Boost mailing list -- boost@lists.boost.org To unsubscribe send an email to boost-leave@lists.boost.org https://lists.boost.org/mailman3/lists/boost.lists.boost.org/ Archived at: https://lists.boost.org/archives/list/boost@lists.boost.org/message/7ICP6I7S...