First of all, please provide recent benchmarks (GCC 4.2 is not recent) on multiple OSes that test more than one small subset of Boost. Otherwise your statements

First of all, please provide recent benchmarks (GCC 4.2 is not recent) on multiple OSes that test more than one small subset of Boost. Otherwise your statements about performance are doubtful at best. Second of all, those symbols will have an effect on compile times, but they should certainly be stripped out by the linker. Why would symbols that do nothing sit in the executable? Thirdly, Boost's purpose is to iterate faster than the C++ standard library and have real-world data about what libraries work and are needed. Those libraries would then be included in next C++ standards, as it has happened with TR1. There are useful libraries inside Boost and there are research libraries or concept libraries. Don't use a library just because it's included in Boost! I use Boost and Qt. Since TR1 I didn't need Boost as much, which means that it's achieved one of its goals.