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There was a general prohibition on libraries that don't ship with the compiler, but you could ask the professor for an exception. Someone asked about Boost and

There was a general prohibition on libraries that don't ship with the compiler, but you could ask the professor for an exception. Someone asked about Boost and a blanket exception for the non-parsing and scanning parts of Boost was granted. However the C++ team I talked to didn't use it. Also note that it's not only the sum types that are important, powerful pattern matching facilities are part of what makes them so valuable.

shaklee3 7y ago
C++ has had sum types for years, so I'm not sure why that was mentioned. If you aren't familiar/experienced with the language, then the comparison is not fair overall.
- jcora 7y ago
  Yeah it's had everything for years. I'd rather shoot myself than use those features outside of a modern language where they aren't just bolted on along a billion other things.
  - shaklee3 7y ago
    That's not a useful comment. Would you rather they just kill the language instead of improving it?
    - jcora 7y ago
      Absolutely. Killing it would be the most useful improvement.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  It is correct to note that C++ lacks some core language features that many newer languages have, tailored to more convenient and, often, safer use of slippery sum types. Sum types are a step away from lexical typing, and without that support add risk that strong typing was invented to contain. There is an active project to have a powerful pattern-matching primitive ready in time to adopt into C++23. In the meantime, C++17 supports "structured bindings" that are often helpful.