24 May
2010
24 May
'10
4:54 a.m.
On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 10:03 PM, Joshua D. Boyd <jdboyd(a)jdboyd.net> wrote:
I think it isn't difficult to read because it is C++ or Boost. It is
difficult to read because it involves concepts like promises and futures,
which are advanced topics that a lot of people (myself included) aren't
adequately familiar with (at least not without referring to a cheat sheet).
If we rewrote that with C types using a C type future/promise system, I'm
not sure it would be any easier to read for those of us who don't
intuitively grok promises and futures.
what he said. we can extend this to a lot of boost-covered stuff. a C
implementation of boost::optional would be similarly opaque and clumsy, i
think.
i also can't begin to imagine how to implement scoped-lifetime objects in C.
even without exceptions (which admittedly do cause some conceptual pain in
C++), the ability to know that wherever you return from within a function,
relevant local objects will be cleaned up has a significant simplifying
effect on the design of a function.
so yes, you can certainly get along without these ideas and write very
sophisticated software. the issue is really about whether you want to. when
i went to write a functor class a few months ago, i got about 90% of the way
there in a few hours. then i went and read the boost headers and realized
there was an entire universe of semantic details that i was overlooking and
that to get all the way "there" would take me weeks, assuming i ever got
there. so i could (a) do without functors or (b) use the boost
implementation. i chose (a).
--p