That's like saying chess appeals to folks who like memorizing openings and practicing until they're able to apply it better than the other loser they're playing up against. I'm sorry it takes practice and "skill" to not get stomped, but surely you wouldn't want to play with losers anyway eh?
Except, many people do believe that is a significant problem with the game of chess. One particularly famous player invented an alternative game called Fischer Random Chess. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960
If it's not economically viable, it won't happen. The world doesn't run on good will, it runs on money.
So sorry, but you've confused the world with the economy. The economy runs on money, but the world runs on mostly nuclear fusion with a little geothermal thrown in.
Since when did simple cynicism become worthy of insightful mods? Never mind, don't answer that.
Not sure why this was modded funny. It's actually a pretty reasonable way to make a good estimate. If it takes X time to crank out a working prototype feature, then it usually takes 3X to rigorously test and fix it, and it also takes 3X to take it from working to truly usable. If you want something well tested and easy to use, that's 9X total.
The parent's math is a little generous (12.5X), but pretty much spot on. The real challenge people seem to have when making estimates is that when management asks "how long will it take to make X", they mean the final product X, while engineers think they are talking about the functional prototype because that's the part that's interesting to them. The rest is just "polishing" it up, which even though that polish part is 90% of the work, most engineers consider it trivial.
Not quite, as I currently have the choice to buy a high-deductible policy or even to go without insurance altogether. I won't have either of those choices under the bills currently under consideration in the Congress.
Actually, your choice is to buy insurance, or to steal from everybody else when you do get seriously ill and cannot pay for your own care. The only real alternative is to allow hospitals to turn away anyone who cannot show ability to pay (upon admission) for all services they will be provided.
In other words, don't preach about how the liberals are trying to rip money out of your knuckled hands, if you are scheming your own method of stealing money from those of us with the wisdom to make plans for our own illness.
Say you're teaching them how to use mathematical approximation algorithms to quickly compute line intersections.
You could use a simple graphing package and have them use their algorithm to draw the two vectors and see how close they get.
Or you could turn the vectors into arrows and have them try to shoot down another arrow in mid-flight.
Which would you have more fun writing?
The first. I don't know about you, but I never took one class at a time in college. If the professor had the option of assigning two different assignments, which both taught exactly the same subject matter, but the "fun" option was going to add 3x the time commitment, I would take the quicker and equally educational assignment almost every time. Besides, even if I had the academic time for the longer assignment, it was usually more valuable to socialize than make a computer arrow shoot another computer arrow just because.
That said, the correct assignment in such cases is usually to assign the first, and tack on some trivial bonus credit for the second. That's usually just enough motivation that the people who think the additional task looks fun, that they'll do it and thoroughly enjoy themselves, while those with different priorities don't have much reason to waste their time with it.
Then you start feeling hungry, and the body which has a tendency to gain fat, usually gains it because your hunger feels more intense to you than to most slim people who just shrug it off. Take it from an obese person, getting really hungry feels somewhat like drug starvation, you feel ultra-miserable. And still you need to cut on the calories.
That's how it feels for everyone. Hunger is there to let you know you are starving, or at least on the path towards starving. It's meant as a reminder to eat something.
I know for me, I just have to consciously recognize that some hunger is a good thing. For example, if you are hungry all day long, you're probably eating too little, but if you eat proper portions you should always wake up hungry. That's how I know if I ate too much the night before; did I wake up kind of hungry?
Also, your complaint about weight loss taking time is just excuse making. I have lost 30 lbs over the last 4 years, and I feel/look great by comparison. Do the math on that, and I'm losing less than a pound a month. I wasn't obese, but I was overweight, and it has made a major difference in my energy levels, how I feel, and how I feel about my self image. Small improvements over time do add up, you just need a diet that is sustainable over that time. If you can lose half a pound a month, without suffering you might be able to keep it up unlike the dieting you described above.
I don't know, flight had been around for millions of years before anyone discovered a commercially viable approach suitable for human consumption. The idea of mechanical computation devices was around for a century before it became viable even in military applications. Cotton used to be prohibitively expensive for hundreds of years as well.
Sometimes there is simply a nontrivial step that needs to be worked out before a technology can be exploited at a useful scale.
Your example is exactly why goto is considered harmful. Most of the time when people think it's necessary, they just haven't decomposed their problem correctly.
You're missing the zeitgeist. Most people really do have excess processing power. Ask your parents or their friends what they do with their computer. Mine check their email, write documents in MS Office, maybe use a simple spreadsheet, surf the web, and play solitaire.
It's been years since the last breakthrough application came out that was both valuable to most people, and benefited significantly from greater processing power./. is excited about low power boxes because in portable computing an extended battery life is truly exciting. It may often be the killer feature for a product. Consider a netbook : slow processor, small screen, uncomfortably small keyboard, ultra-portable, and about 60% the price of a low end laptop. That actually doesn't look that great, unless I mention that instead of 2 hrs of battery life, it gets 8 hrs to a charge. Battery life really matters. It matters in netbooks, cellphones, mp3 players, portable gaming systems, and pretty much anything else you don't plug in.
How is this not flamebait? I have worked with young guys who don't know what they are doing, and I have worked with old guys who don't know what they're doing.
Incompetence knows no age limit. Neither does competence by the way. In your case, FlyingGuy, I would not hire you (if I were doing hiring) and it has nothing to do with your age, but rather with your bad attitude.
FWIW, I am a younger programmer and I have found two things (major generalization forthcoming). 1) The older developers have taught me very little about programming. Actually, I usually teach them how to code better. Too many of them are confused by templates and don't really know how to do OOP correctly. 2) The older developers have taught me plenty about software development. These guys know best practices, they know the design mistakes they've been burned in the past by, and they know how to spec a problem.
In other words, don't turn to the old guys for what you can learn in school, but do use them as an excellent resource for the rest.
Really? How come third party developers largely ignore the Wii and focus on Xbox360 and PS3 instead?
As posted below, each system has plenty of games today, but perhaps you are referring more to the fact that the Wii often doesn't get the same games the PS3 and XBox 360 get. I'm sure in most cases it's a simple matter of economics.
1) Most people have a PS3 or an XBox 360 (or neither). If I write a game for PS3, the port to XBox nets me mostly new gamers. 2) Less so with Wii, as many people have a 360 and a Wii for instance. If I write a 360 game and port to Wii, those who already have the 360 original won't buy it. My market is constrained. 3) Perhaps the Wii is more work to port to. The limited graphics make it cheaper to develop for, but if you've already created an HD world you need to remove a lot of it to port to Wii as well as modify the controls accordingly.
If the cost to port outweigh the new sales, you don't do it. That's my guess about why you don't see the AAA PS/XBox titles ported to the Wii as often.
If the Wii was your first console in a decade, then it is likely to be your last as well. The Wii proved that people do not need HD graphics, Blu-Rays worth of cutscenes, or mult-disc slogfests like you see on the PS3 and 360. Instead, they want simple games, with direct manipulation controls. The Wii provided all this, complete with a way to indulge your nostalgia by downloading older titles.
The problem? Nintendo flattened peoples expectations for a console. The massive technological leap from the PS2 to the PS3 was, from a sales standpoint, unneeded. But where does that leave Nintendo? There is no customer base who wants a Wii 2...
The difficulty of PS3s selling against PS2s has demonstrated the point about better graphics not being very valuable better than the Wii did.
But, I think you entirely misunderstand what the Wii does provide. It (along with the DS, and Guitar Hero) presents the first fresh gaming experience since the NES/Sega Master System days. It didn't prove that there is no demand for HD graphics; rather that there is more demand for innovative game play.
Nintendo has no future as soon as they stop innovating (almost happened with the gamecube). The same is true for MSFT and Sony. If the PS4 or XBox720(?) offer only improved graphics they will prove to be very expensive gambles that risk losing massive money for their respective companies. Oh, wait...I guess that happened this generation.
no doubt, not many would choose option e) -- which both the creationists and scientists would think is just nuts -- but insofar as the number of possible theories examined, out of the many theories, it always only comes down to just two - ludicrous creationism, or ape science - other options aren't ever discussed, when there are other options. why are we caught in this polarity between the two ideas that have no overlaps in venn diagram...?:-P
I think it's as simple as students only receive a limited number of class hours in the study of science. If everyone spend an hour a week for their entire life studying science (or philosophy) you would have time to study any number of increasingly "out there" ideas.
As for why it comes down to those two, it's because one of them is appropriate for the course and the other is advocated by a large and vocal portion of the population. Or, to take your argument further...
Why do we insist on only teaching algebra/geometry/calculus in high school math courses? Why not alternative math theory b) or c)?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but generally speaking, I was always under the impression that, as an interpreted language, javascript will never be able to run 100% as fast as natively compiled C code.
There seems to be a bit of confusion on this issue. Runtime compilers (like what java uses) can and do produce faster code than native compiled C/C++, but it depends on how you define fast.
With JIT, what typically happens is that everything is interpretted at first, and the runtime compiler begins to analyze which code segments should be optimized. Because the compiler knows not just the source material, but how it's actually running it can do a better job optimizing the code than native C compilers could.
But there's one very big catch. For small tasks like 'ls' the native program loads instantly whereas the JIT compiled code does not. Also, if your program is rather heterogenius with few bits of code being executed repeatedly it will not perform as well as a native program.
Where this technique really shines is in cpu intensive programs. In the future, when you hear two people argue whether or not Java is slow compared to C++ it's good to remember they are both wrong.
It's just that no one has come up with a better language. If no one comes up with a better language, why reinvent the wheel?
That's ignoring the bootstrapping problem. If I have super language X, nobody can develop on it until the major browsers support it. Of course, as a browser vendor what motivation do you have to support a new language if no websites use it yet?
So, develop the perfect language. You can help bootstrap by writing the interpreter for Fire Fox or other open browsers, but most people still use IE and a large chunk use Safari. How will you make them add your language? Especially if it's so good that it can compete with silverlight as well.
Re:Are we talking about the same library?
on
Boost 1.36 Released
·
· Score: 1
I think this is the first boost complaint I've seen on this thread I would agree with. Some functionality in boost can be very difficult to understand, even if it is powerful. The date/time is one that I used recently and found less than intuitive.
Most of this, however, is not a problem with the library, but rather a problem with the documentation. I find code that uses boost ends up being quite readable (assuming no metatemplate programming) however.
Re:Are we talking about the same library?
on
Boost 1.36 Released
·
· Score: 1
The philosophy of C++ has always been that you only pay a performance hit for the features you use. A shared_ptr class follows this rule of thumb accurately. It's a good reason not to use the feature (if you have code that cannot suffer that performance hit), but it is not a valid reason to exclude it from the standard implementations.
Basically, STL is a "good start" towards a general library. Boost is here to help us get a little further.
Re:Boost epitomizes everything that is wrong with
on
Boost 1.36 Released
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Well, template metaprograms are crap. They're nigh undebuggable, they produce unreadable error messages, they take forever to compile, and most C++ programmers don't know how to write (or even read) their implementations. They're an abomination.
Since meta-programming is clearly useful, and something that a lot of programmers want to do... why not add true compile-time metaprogramming support to C++ (or better yet, develop a 10x simpler and cleaner language and put proper compile-time metaprogramming support into it)? Templates are not a natural way to express metaprograms. Why not give C++ programmers the tools to write nice, clean, object-oriented, imperative metaprograms instead of the kludgy functional metaprograms they are forced to scrape by with now?
This isn't proof that template metaprogramming or even the boost implementation of it sucks. This is proof that you've seen some bad code written with that feature. So what? Get in line! I've seen rotten code written using too many macros, I've seen rotten code written using too many templates, I've seen rotten code written using too many classes.
Basically, name a language feature, find some engineer who decides that feature is the final greatest achievement in programming, and then give him a year or so. He'll produce some awful, unreadable, undebuggable code.
Personally, I find boost quite useful, and I have never used it to write template metaprograms (it has other features as well). I think they are cool, but I just haven't run into anything where I needed that kind of performance boost.
Are we talking about the same library?
on
Boost 1.36 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm seeing tons of comments on this thread about how awful boost is and how all it does is cause global warming, start wars with middle eastern nations, and destroy the pristine beauty of C++. Huh?!?
Yes, boost includes meta programming libraries, but it also provides a number of other useful and relatively basic features which truly are missing in C++. The shared_ptr class is one example that nobody thought to include in STL for some unclear reason. What if you want non-platform specific threading or date/time functions?
If you aren't using boost, that's fine, but it is as excellent of a general purpose C++ library as we have available today.
One company is very good at fostering a developer community and making sure it's easy to get on board their API. The other seems like it goes out of their way to torture devs.
Agreed. Sun produces excellent documentation. Their javadoc API is truly well executed. Perhaps some day, one of their more profitable competitors will learn to do the same.
Slashdot Mirror
That's like saying chess appeals to folks who like memorizing openings and practicing until they're able to apply it better than the other loser they're playing up against. I'm sorry it takes practice and "skill" to not get stomped, but surely you wouldn't want to play with losers anyway eh?
Except, many people do believe that is a significant problem with the game of chess. One particularly famous player invented an alternative game called Fischer Random Chess. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960
If it's not economically viable, it won't happen. The world doesn't run on good will, it runs on money.
So sorry, but you've confused the world with the economy. The economy runs on money, but the world runs on mostly nuclear fusion with a little geothermal thrown in.
Since when did simple cynicism become worthy of insightful mods? Never mind, don't answer that.
Not sure why this was modded funny. It's actually a pretty reasonable way to make a good estimate. If it takes X time to crank out a working prototype feature, then it usually takes 3X to rigorously test and fix it, and it also takes 3X to take it from working to truly usable. If you want something well tested and easy to use, that's 9X total.
The parent's math is a little generous (12.5X), but pretty much spot on. The real challenge people seem to have when making estimates is that when management asks "how long will it take to make X", they mean the final product X, while engineers think they are talking about the functional prototype because that's the part that's interesting to them. The rest is just "polishing" it up, which even though that polish part is 90% of the work, most engineers consider it trivial.
Not quite, as I currently have the choice to buy a high-deductible policy or even to go without insurance altogether. I won't have either of those choices under the bills currently under consideration in the Congress.
Actually, your choice is to buy insurance, or to steal from everybody else when you do get seriously ill and cannot pay for your own care. The only real alternative is to allow hospitals to turn away anyone who cannot show ability to pay (upon admission) for all services they will be provided.
In other words, don't preach about how the liberals are trying to rip money out of your knuckled hands, if you are scheming your own method of stealing money from those of us with the wisdom to make plans for our own illness.
Say you're teaching them how to use mathematical approximation algorithms to quickly compute line intersections.
You could use a simple graphing package and have them use their algorithm to draw the two vectors and see how close they get.
Or you could turn the vectors into arrows and have them try to shoot down another arrow in mid-flight.
Which would you have more fun writing?
The first. I don't know about you, but I never took one class at a time in college. If the professor had the option of assigning two different assignments, which both taught exactly the same subject matter, but the "fun" option was going to add 3x the time commitment, I would take the quicker and equally educational assignment almost every time. Besides, even if I had the academic time for the longer assignment, it was usually more valuable to socialize than make a computer arrow shoot another computer arrow just because.
That said, the correct assignment in such cases is usually to assign the first, and tack on some trivial bonus credit for the second. That's usually just enough motivation that the people who think the additional task looks fun, that they'll do it and thoroughly enjoy themselves, while those with different priorities don't have much reason to waste their time with it.
Then you start feeling hungry, and the body which has a tendency to gain fat, usually gains it because your hunger feels more intense to you than to most slim people who just shrug it off. Take it from an obese person, getting really hungry feels somewhat like drug starvation, you feel ultra-miserable. And still you need to cut on the calories.
That's how it feels for everyone. Hunger is there to let you know you are starving, or at least on the path towards starving. It's meant as a reminder to eat something.
I know for me, I just have to consciously recognize that some hunger is a good thing. For example, if you are hungry all day long, you're probably eating too little, but if you eat proper portions you should always wake up hungry. That's how I know if I ate too much the night before; did I wake up kind of hungry?
Also, your complaint about weight loss taking time is just excuse making. I have lost 30 lbs over the last 4 years, and I feel/look great by comparison. Do the math on that, and I'm losing less than a pound a month. I wasn't obese, but I was overweight, and it has made a major difference in my energy levels, how I feel, and how I feel about my self image. Small improvements over time do add up, you just need a diet that is sustainable over that time. If you can lose half a pound a month, without suffering you might be able to keep it up unlike the dieting you described above.
I don't know, flight had been around for millions of years before anyone discovered a commercially viable approach suitable for human consumption. The idea of mechanical computation devices was around for a century before it became viable even in military applications. Cotton used to be prohibitively expensive for hundreds of years as well.
Sometimes there is simply a nontrivial step that needs to be worked out before a technology can be exploited at a useful scale.
Ever hear of writing functions for that?
E.g.
Foo* findFoo(string& name) { // deeply nested loops!!!!
{
{
{
{
return result;
}
}
}
}
return NULL;
}
Your example is exactly why goto is considered harmful. Most of the time when people think it's necessary, they just haven't decomposed their problem correctly.
Pointers and ints were almost interchangeable.
Good news my friend, now pointers are completely interchangeable with size_ts. No "almost" about it. Cheers!
Not quite a fair comparison. I mean, NetBeans and Eclipse can be used with a much larger number of languages than Visual Studio.
I prefer VS for my C++ development, but only by a small margin over NetBeans, and that's on Windows.
Don't look now, but there are already netbooks on the market for "about $200". In fact, here's one for $249.99.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220270
You're missing the zeitgeist. Most people really do have excess processing power. Ask your parents or their friends what they do with their computer. Mine check their email, write documents in MS Office, maybe use a simple spreadsheet, surf the web, and play solitaire.
It's been years since the last breakthrough application came out that was both valuable to most people, and benefited significantly from greater processing power. /. is excited about low power boxes because in portable computing an extended battery life is truly exciting. It may often be the killer feature for a product. Consider a netbook : slow processor, small screen, uncomfortably small keyboard, ultra-portable, and about 60% the price of a low end laptop. That actually doesn't look that great, unless I mention that instead of 2 hrs of battery life, it gets 8 hrs to a charge. Battery life really matters. It matters in netbooks, cellphones, mp3 players, portable gaming systems, and pretty much anything else you don't plug in.
I would actually recommend NetBeans over Eclipse for most users of more common languages (C, C++, Java, Python, Ruby).
How is this not flamebait? I have worked with young guys who don't know what they are doing, and I have worked with old guys who don't know what they're doing.
Incompetence knows no age limit. Neither does competence by the way. In your case, FlyingGuy, I would not hire you (if I were doing hiring) and it has nothing to do with your age, but rather with your bad attitude.
FWIW, I am a younger programmer and I have found two things (major generalization forthcoming). 1) The older developers have taught me very little about programming. Actually, I usually teach them how to code better. Too many of them are confused by templates and don't really know how to do OOP correctly. 2) The older developers have taught me plenty about software development. These guys know best practices, they know the design mistakes they've been burned in the past by, and they know how to spec a problem.
In other words, don't turn to the old guys for what you can learn in school, but do use them as an excellent resource for the rest.
Really? How come third party developers largely ignore the Wii and focus on Xbox360 and PS3 instead?
As posted below, each system has plenty of games today, but perhaps you are referring more to the fact that the Wii often doesn't get the same games the PS3 and XBox 360 get. I'm sure in most cases it's a simple matter of economics.
1) Most people have a PS3 or an XBox 360 (or neither). If I write a game for PS3, the port to XBox nets me mostly new gamers.
2) Less so with Wii, as many people have a 360 and a Wii for instance. If I write a 360 game and port to Wii, those who already have the 360 original won't buy it. My market is constrained.
3) Perhaps the Wii is more work to port to. The limited graphics make it cheaper to develop for, but if you've already created an HD world you need to remove a lot of it to port to Wii as well as modify the controls accordingly.
If the cost to port outweigh the new sales, you don't do it. That's my guess about why you don't see the AAA PS/XBox titles ported to the Wii as often.
If the Wii was your first console in a decade, then it is likely to be your last as well. The Wii proved that people do not need HD graphics, Blu-Rays worth of cutscenes, or mult-disc slogfests like you see on the PS3 and 360. Instead, they want simple games, with direct manipulation controls. The Wii provided all this, complete with a way to indulge your nostalgia by downloading older titles.
The problem? Nintendo flattened peoples expectations for a console. The massive technological leap from the PS2 to the PS3 was, from a sales standpoint, unneeded. But where does that leave Nintendo? There is no customer base who wants a Wii 2...
The difficulty of PS3s selling against PS2s has demonstrated the point about better graphics not being very valuable better than the Wii did.
But, I think you entirely misunderstand what the Wii does provide. It (along with the DS, and Guitar Hero) presents the first fresh gaming experience since the NES/Sega Master System days. It didn't prove that there is no demand for HD graphics; rather that there is more demand for innovative game play.
Nintendo has no future as soon as they stop innovating (almost happened with the gamecube). The same is true for MSFT and Sony. If the PS4 or XBox720(?) offer only improved graphics they will prove to be very expensive gambles that risk losing massive money for their respective companies. Oh, wait...I guess that happened this generation.
no doubt, not many would choose option e) -- which both the creationists and scientists would think is just nuts -- but insofar as the number of possible theories examined, out of the many theories, it always only comes down to just two - ludicrous creationism, or ape science - other options aren't ever discussed, when there are other options. why are we caught in this polarity between the two ideas that have no overlaps in venn diagram...? :-P
I think it's as simple as students only receive a limited number of class hours in the study of science. If everyone spend an hour a week for their entire life studying science (or philosophy) you would have time to study any number of increasingly "out there" ideas.
As for why it comes down to those two, it's because one of them is appropriate for the course and the other is advocated by a large and vocal portion of the population. Or, to take your argument further...
Why do we insist on only teaching algebra/geometry/calculus in high school math courses? Why not alternative math theory b) or c)?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but generally speaking, I was always under the impression that, as an interpreted language, javascript will never be able to run 100% as fast as natively compiled C code.
There seems to be a bit of confusion on this issue. Runtime compilers (like what java uses) can and do produce faster code than native compiled C/C++, but it depends on how you define fast.
With JIT, what typically happens is that everything is interpretted at first, and the runtime compiler begins to analyze which code segments should be optimized. Because the compiler knows not just the source material, but how it's actually running it can do a better job optimizing the code than native C compilers could.
But there's one very big catch. For small tasks like 'ls' the native program loads instantly whereas the JIT compiled code does not. Also, if your program is rather heterogenius with few bits of code being executed repeatedly it will not perform as well as a native program.
Where this technique really shines is in cpu intensive programs. In the future, when you hear two people argue whether or not Java is slow compared to C++ it's good to remember they are both wrong.
It's just that no one has come up with a better language. If no one comes up with a better language, why reinvent the wheel?
That's ignoring the bootstrapping problem. If I have super language X, nobody can develop on it until the major browsers support it. Of course, as a browser vendor what motivation do you have to support a new language if no websites use it yet?
So, develop the perfect language. You can help bootstrap by writing the interpreter for Fire Fox or other open browsers, but most people still use IE and a large chunk use Safari. How will you make them add your language? Especially if it's so good that it can compete with silverlight as well.
I think this is the first boost complaint I've seen on this thread I would agree with. Some functionality in boost can be very difficult to understand, even if it is powerful. The date/time is one that I used recently and found less than intuitive.
Most of this, however, is not a problem with the library, but rather a problem with the documentation. I find code that uses boost ends up being quite readable (assuming no metatemplate programming) however.
The philosophy of C++ has always been that you only pay a performance hit for the features you use. A shared_ptr class follows this rule of thumb accurately. It's a good reason not to use the feature (if you have code that cannot suffer that performance hit), but it is not a valid reason to exclude it from the standard implementations.
Basically, STL is a "good start" towards a general library. Boost is here to help us get a little further.
Well, template metaprograms are crap. They're nigh undebuggable, they produce unreadable error messages, they take forever to compile, and most C++ programmers don't know how to write (or even read) their implementations. They're an abomination.
Since meta-programming is clearly useful, and something that a lot of programmers want to do... why not add true compile-time metaprogramming support to C++ (or better yet, develop a 10x simpler and cleaner language and put proper compile-time metaprogramming support into it)? Templates are not a natural way to express metaprograms. Why not give C++ programmers the tools to write nice, clean, object-oriented, imperative metaprograms instead of the kludgy functional metaprograms they are forced to scrape by with now?
This isn't proof that template metaprogramming or even the boost implementation of it sucks. This is proof that you've seen some bad code written with that feature. So what? Get in line! I've seen rotten code written using too many macros, I've seen rotten code written using too many templates, I've seen rotten code written using too many classes.
Basically, name a language feature, find some engineer who decides that feature is the final greatest achievement in programming, and then give him a year or so. He'll produce some awful, unreadable, undebuggable code.
Personally, I find boost quite useful, and I have never used it to write template metaprograms (it has other features as well). I think they are cool, but I just haven't run into anything where I needed that kind of performance boost.
I'm seeing tons of comments on this thread about how awful boost is and how all it does is cause global warming, start wars with middle eastern nations, and destroy the pristine beauty of C++. Huh?!?
Yes, boost includes meta programming libraries, but it also provides a number of other useful and relatively basic features which truly are missing in C++. The shared_ptr class is one example that nobody thought to include in STL for some unclear reason. What if you want non-platform specific threading or date/time functions?
If you aren't using boost, that's fine, but it is as excellent of a general purpose C++ library as we have available today.
One company is very good at fostering a developer community and making sure it's easy to get on board their API. The other seems like it goes out of their way to torture devs.
Agreed. Sun produces excellent documentation. Their javadoc API is truly well executed. Perhaps some day, one of their more profitable competitors will learn to do the same.
Computers that play chess, go, and similar games can't hope to make the best possible move during each turn
But they can in checkers, which is now a solved game.