Re: [Boost-users] Getting started with Boost: what did you need to know?

From: me22 (me22.ca_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-02 01:34:02

On 01/02/06, David Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Chris Goller <goller_at_[hidden]> writes:
> > I know everytime I did something new with boost, I caught myself saying,
> > "C++ is so freaking cool."
>
> Could you give a few examples?  When you've been around Boost and C++
> as long as I have, you tend to lose touch with what will wow people.
> It would be really helpful to know what kinds of things you did that
> made you say that.
>

For me it was discovering Boost.Lambda.  I had learned bind1st and
bind2nd and really didn't understand why this functional programming
was such a big deal since it was just so messy.  Just a simple sort(
c.begin(), c.end(), *_2 < *_1 ) really drives home the brilliance of
Lambda for me.  Functional-style programming just started making
sense, and I realised how incredibly cool it was that this could be
done in C++ with no specific language support.  Of course then Lambda
got upgraded ( or maybe I just hadn't found it before ) to include
switches and conditionals and exceptions and nearly everything you can
do in C++ and I got amazed again.

~ Scott McMurray