On 3/18/2021 12:07 PM, Niall Douglas via Boost wrote:
On 17/03/2021 18:02, Emil Dotchevski via Boost wrote:
If your goal is standardization, convincing the users is utterly irrelevant to success. Worse, it is a lose-lose proposition, you might get one and a half stars on GitHub which doesn't look too good. I remember Niall giving (good) advice that if the goal is standardization, it is best to not bother with a Boost review, either: it adds a lot more work that is irrelevant to achieving your goal, plus you risk rejection which doesn't look too good.
That's not _quite_ what I advised, though it is close.
My advice was, and always has been, that the most valuable aspect of Boost _to the library_ and its author is the peer review. A high quality review is quite literally priceless - it cannot be bought for money. It's why I get so annoyed when some proposers only care about getting into Boost at all costs, that the review is only a hurdle which can be beaten down using groupies, which feels to me an enormous wasted opportunity to make the best C++ libraries possible.
In this aspect, Boost has been very good for me. Both of the libraries I presented to Boost - AFIO and Outcome - both were completely reimplemented and completely redesigned from the feedback received here. I personally believe that the reason why WG21 has to date liked my libraries so much is precisely because of those Boost reviews. So thank you Boost!
What you may be remembering me saying Emil is that once you get the review from Boost, the incentive to finish the library and get it into Boost is low if your goal is standardisation. You can skip rewriting all that documentation and tutorials and examples and having to deal with real end users for the next two decades if you go straight from Boost review to WG21 standards, skipping finishing your library sufficient for Boost. Given the plethora of C++ package managers today including github, Boost as a distribution vehicle is nothing like as important as it once was, so all in all, the value added from shipping in Boost is a fraction of what it was fifteen or twenty years ago.
I skipped Boost and went straight to WG21 with LLFIO, and I feel very guilty about it. I did do the honourable thing for Outcome however. And I'll never, ever, get another library into Boost again unless someone is paying me to do it. Once is enough.
Was it really that bad, Niall ! You have already said that the review was very helpful. Most good C++ programmers probably view getting a library into Boost as an indication of their ability and also a great experience in hearing what their peers think. On the practical side getting a library into the C++ standard must be far more difficult than getting a library into Boost, so I do not think it is very practical for a programmer to think that some library he has developed is going to be accepted as part of the C++ standard, but it may be good enough to get into Boost. The focus here is very different from the C++ standards committee as far as libraries are concerned, thank goodness. So despite your viewpoint I would be willing to bet that most C++ programmers find Boost much less onerous when it comes to library approval than the C++ standards committee. This is not meant to be a criticism of the C++ standards committee in any way. They are the custodians, if you will, of a computer language and their viewpoint as to what constitutes that language and its official software has to be stringent as far as large-scale usefulness is concerned.