Proto for Boost mailing list page: Re: [proto] for your review: intro to a series of blog posts about proto and phoenix v3

Subject: Re: [proto] for your review: intro to a series of blog posts about proto and phoenix v3
From: Thomas Heller (thom.heller_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-08-10 11:30:52

On Tuesday 10 August 2010 17:21:53 Eric Niebler wrote:
> On 8/10/2010 11:14
AM, Robert Jones wrote:
> > Well, as a complete novice to code of this
sophistication I
> > understood that piece perfectly, as far as it goes.
Naturally, as the
> > opening piece of a series it raises far more questions
than it
> > answers.
> 
> That's great feedback, thank you.

To follow up, I
like it too!

> 
> > It also scares me somewhat. This stuff could mark an
absolute
> > explosion of complexity in the code your average jobbing
programmer
> > is expected to get to grips with, and in my experience the
technology
> > is already slipping from the grasp of most of us! When you
get this
> > stuff wrong, what do the error messages look like? Boost.Bind
&
> > Boost.Lambda errors are already enough to send most of us running
for
> > the hills,
> 
> A great point! (I've held back a whole rant about
how long template
> error messages are library bugs and should be filed as
such. That's a
> whole other blog post.) I sort of address this when I say
that a good
> dsel toolkit would force dsel authors to rigorously define
their dsels,
> leading to "better usage experiences". That's pretty vague,
though. I
> could be more explicit. But certainly the intention here is that
proto
> makes it easier for dsel authors to give their users more succinct
error
> messages.

I think this will greatly change when we have static
assert support on the majorities of compiler.

> > and tool support is
somewhat lacking as far as I know,
> > being pretty much limited to
STLFilt.
> > 
> > Maybe I'm just too long in the tooth for this!
> > 
> >
Still, great piece, and I look forward to subsequent installments.
> 
>
Thanks,