From: Jeff Garland (azswdude_at_[hidden])
Date: 2023-11-28 16:14:10
On Sun, Nov 26, 2023 at 7:14 AM Andrey Semashev via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On 11/26/23 06:27, Vinnie Falco wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 25, 2023 at 6:17 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost
> > <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> >> The fact that the standard doesn't provide that functionality (provided
> that it is needed by users) is a deficiency of the standard, not the Boost
> library.
> >
> > Users vastly prefer even the "defective" std components over the
> > theoretically-better boost components, simply by virtue of them being
> > in the standard, with all of the benefits this brings. Education,
> > documentation, ubiquity, and so on, for std components is orders of
> > magnitude more robust than the boost equivalent. This more than makes
> > up for any perceived deficiencies. Like it or not, vocabulary types
> > and algorithms which make it into std are going to have an enormous
> > advantage over any third party code.
>
> I'd like to think everyone is free to make their own choice based on
> their own criteria and merits of each of the options. Availability of
> the standard library is an important advantage, but it is not ultimate.
> Personally, I find the standard library severely lacking, meaning I
> cannot reasonably write a serious project relying solely on the standard
> library and nothing else. I'd have to write a lot of code that I know
> exists and tested in other libraries like Boost, and I'd have to be mad
> not to try and reuse it. So you could say Boost is my natural extension
> of the standard library, something that I always have by my hand, just
> as easily reachable as the standard library.
>
> BTW, on the topic of innovation and stagnation, my other complaint about
> the standard library (or rather its implementations, every one of them)
> is that once a feature is implemented, it gets frozen because of ABI
> stability. Stable ABI is important, but because of it bugs like this[1]
> never get fixed.
>
> [1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=98978
>
>
I don't disagree with your overall point (see my comment on opt-in), but
it's simply untrue that things are *frozen* -- implying no changes are
possible due to ABI constraints. Newer versions of optional support
additional facilities (monadic interface) and I suspect you'll see support
for references in 26. Yep, ABI updates prevent some changes, but not every
change.
Jeff