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As a non-C++ developer, I'm curious just how many developers who choose C++ are using Boost. From what little I have heard from friends, it seems that C++ essen

As a non-C++ developer, I'm curious just how many developers who choose C++ are using Boost. From what little I have heard from friends, it seems that C++ essentially implies using Boost - which could be seen as a good thing, or a really really bad thing.

user5994461 10y ago
Well. One doesn't have to use boost ever. I'd assume that most C++ programmers out here don't use boost on a daily basis. At the heart of the languages, in C you can only make additions and divisions, in C++ you can also make classes and use containers to store data. These are very low level building blocks, it's not enough to make any meaningful development productively. You're forced to use 3rd party libraries if you want to achieve anything. (e.g. File, IO, Socket, Thread...) There are many libraries/frameworks out there. I'd dare saying that C and C++ are extremely fragmented [by domains, platforms, tools...]. There is a minor subset of the desktop C++ developers that pick Boost as the default library choice and try to put that in all projects. They're just very vocal on StackOverflow [and all over the internet].
gpderetta 10y ago
I would say, as an heavy boost user, that today boost is no longer required. Most of boost basic utilities have either been incorporated in or superceded by the standard library. Boost is still very useful for many advanced or domain specific libraries.
- int_19h 10y ago
  There are still a lot of minor conveniences, like lexical_cast, or uuid, or various helper algorithms (esp. for strings), that aren't subsumed, or at least not fully. Also, one big deal is Asio. Which, granted, can be had separately from Boost... but Boost offers a convenient place to get it along with other minor stuff. Then there's the question of how up-to-date the C++ implementation you're coding against is. A lot of stuff is nominally in the standard library, and if you use the latest and greatest, you might even have it out of the box... but for many people, they're still working on, at most, C++11 compilers, and so they need an outside source for stuff like filesystem.
int_19h 10y ago
It is largely driven by the choice of framework. If you use Qt, for example, it is likely that you will also use their collections, streams etc, rather than STL and Boost. Ditto if you use MFC (though thankfully that is largely relegated to legacy code now), wxWidgets etc. Having said that, Boost has, to significant extent, become the prototyping sandbox for things that are then added to C++ standard proper - shared_ptr, any, variant, filesystem and many others all originated in Boost, and after many years of use and polish by the community, became (or are in the process of becoming) a part of the C++ standard library. This makes Boost more important than it used to be.

user5994461 10y ago

Well. One doesn't have to use boost ever. I'd assume that most C++ programmers out here don't use boost on a daily basis. At the heart of the languages, in C you can only make additions and divisions, in C++ you can also make classes and use containers to store data. These are very low level building blocks, it's not enough to make any meaningful development productively. You're forced to use 3rd party libraries if you want to achieve anything. (e.g. File, IO, Socket, Thread...) There are many libraries/frameworks out there. I'd dare saying that C and C++ are extremely fragmented [by domains, platforms, tools...]. There is a minor subset of the desktop C++ developers that pick Boost as the default library choice and try to put that in all projects. They're just very vocal on StackOverflow [and all over the internet].

gpderetta 10y ago

I would say, as an heavy boost user, that today boost is no longer required. Most of boost basic utilities have either been incorporated in or superceded by the standard library. Boost is still very useful for many advanced or domain specific libraries.

int_19h 10y ago
There are still a lot of minor conveniences, like lexical_cast, or uuid, or various helper algorithms (esp. for strings), that aren't subsumed, or at least not fully. Also, one big deal is Asio. Which, granted, can be had separately from Boost... but Boost offers a convenient place to get it along with other minor stuff. Then there's the question of how up-to-date the C++ implementation you're coding against is. A lot of stuff is nominally in the standard library, and if you use the latest and greatest, you might even have it out of the box... but for many people, they're still working on, at most, C++11 compilers, and so they need an outside source for stuff like filesystem.

int_19h 10y ago

It is largely driven by the choice of framework. If you use Qt, for example, it is likely that you will also use their collections, streams etc, rather than STL and Boost. Ditto if you use MFC (though thankfully that is largely relegated to legacy code now), wxWidgets etc. Having said that, Boost has, to significant extent, become the prototyping sandbox for things that are then added to C++ standard proper - shared_ptr, any, variant, filesystem and many others all originated in Boost, and after many years of use and polish by the community, became (or are in the process of becoming) a part of the C++ standard library. This makes Boost more important than it used to be.