Re: [Boost-users] Re: Iterators and maps [was Re: Whereshould STLsuggestionsgo?]

From: Jim Lear (jim.lear_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-15 11:20:36

Ben Hutchings wrote:

> Jim Lear wrote:
>
> > I'm just a newbie
>
>> who wants to sequence through my map, really.  I don't want to be 
>> forced to understand iterators, adapters, iterator-independence, and 
>> generic programing paradigms to do so.  :-)
>
> <snip>
>
> I'm afraid you're going to have to understand at least something about 
> iterators and generic programming to be able to make use of the 
> standard library.

I'm beggining to understand that, thanks to everyone's help.  These 
concepts, while superior to the standard programming paradigm, are heavy 
pre-requisites for programmers to learn (especially old school dummies 
like yours truly).  These prerequisites may be large impedements for 
people to adopt STL.  I still cling to the notion that something like 
the container[iterator] concept should be included, and bad old-style 
programming should be accomodated, as long as they're accompanied by 
lots of footnotes explaining that using such concepts will make one's 
code container-dependent.  This would allow people to write useful 
(albeit bad) STL code quickly, while warning signs point the way to 
generic programming.  But since I've had my generic programming lesson 
(directly from the experts, no less), I'll embrace the iterator concept 
and hope that everyone forgets that I ever suggested anything so silly 
as container[iterator].  :-)  Grumble grumble... I always disliked 
pointer methods for accessing arrays in C... grumble grumble... :-)

-- 
Jim Lear