Boost 1.36 Released

AndrewStephens writes "Good news for C++ programmers: Boost 1.36 has been released with 4 new libraries (including very useful exception templates) and a host of updates. In particular, boost.asio (the cross platform AsyncIO library) has seen major additions and now supports asynchronous disk operations on Windows. Almost every modern C++ codebase uses Boost somewhere, and many of its features find their way into the official language specifications."

Comments

Re:I've never used it

[EWIPlayer]

A lot of the other nay-sayers appear to be just useless trolls. You don't, so I'm going to reply.

You're really selling boost and, by derivation, yourself short. Boost makes a ton of things simple and robust. I wrote the following, cross platform C++ code with boost:

• asynchronous and robust TCP server in 80 lines of code - and it's decently configurable
• a command line options parser that's truly extensible in about 60 lines of code.
• a very solid threading model in about 100 lines of code
• a synchronized and notification-based queue in about 50 lines of code
• ... the list goes on for quite a while ...

C++ is old and that means that it doesn't have anything like a modern language has. What it's missing, Boost fills in (not completely, mind you, but it does a really good job). With C++ you get speed and controllable code (C# runs a close second, but I still wouldn't write an OS in it), and with Boost you get a ton of ease back in the language as well.

You're doing yourself a serious disservice by not looking into it. The one thing that I can't believe is that you really did look into it, and certainly not twice. If you did, you'd know it's not just a source of "template tricks"... far, far, far from it.

If you're not using boost, I can guarantee you're reinventing the wheel... badly.