BoostCon 2009 Early Registration Extended to April 26th

[Dave Abrahams]

In recognition of the economic climate, and in order to make possible
the maximum participation this year, we've extended the early
registration deadline for BoostCon until April 26th, so BoostCon is
still only $599. BoostCon has always been a great place to network,
find out what is happening in the C++ community, and learn about the
coolest C++ libraries being developed within and outside of Boost ---
and this year will be better than ever. The official schedule is now
live at http://www.boostcon.com/program. A few highlights of the
"mouth-watering content" (in the words of one enrollee) are:

* A keynote address from Andrei Alexandrescu called "Iterators Must
Go."

* Troy Straszheim's presentations on how high-energy physicists are
using Boost to process massive datasets as they go "Icefishing for
Neutrinos" and on Kamasu, his library for offloading computation to
your machine's GPU.

* Two hands-on sessions where we'll start recoding parts of Boost for
C++0x, applying rvalue references, variadic templates, decltype, and
advanced SFINAE capabilities using the latest GCC.

* "Practical C++ Test-Driven Development with Boost.Test and Bmock,"
by
Asher Sterkin

* A session on compiler construction using Boost.Spirit v2, from
Hartmut
Kaiser and Joel de Guzman

The complete list of sessions covers a wide range of other Boost and
C++-related topics. Please have a look:
http://www.boostcon.com/program/sessions.

The quality of BoostCon has always depended on its diverse and
interesting participants, so bring your ideas, questions, and
experience, and sign up now!

http://www.boostcon.com/registration

See you in Aspen,

 

[woodbrian77]

In recognition of the economic climate, and in order to make possible
the maximum participation this year, we've extended the early
registration deadline for BoostCon until April 26th, so BoostCon is
still only $599. BoostCon has always been a great place to network,
find out what is happening in the C++ community, and learn about the
coolest C++ libraries being developed within and outside of Boost ---
and this year will be better than ever. The official schedule is now
live athttp://www.boostcon.com/program. A few highlights of the
"mouth-watering content" (in the words of one enrollee) are:

* A keynote address from Andrei Alexandrescu called "Iterators Must
Go."

* Troy Straszheim's presentations on how high-energy physicists are
using Boost to process massive datasets as they go "Icefishing for
Neutrinos" and on Kamasu, his library for offloading computation to
your machine's GPU.

* Two hands-on sessions where we'll start recoding parts of Boost for
C++0x, applying rvalue references, variadic templates, decltype, and
advanced SFINAE capabilities using the latest GCC.

Would you agree that recoding that takes advantage of C++ 1998
should be higher priority than C++0x? For example, Boost
Serialization doesn't use hinted inserts with (mulit)set or
(multi)map. I believe Boost Multi Index does. In the
performance section here --
http://webEbenezer.net/comparison.html -- there's a subsection
on Load/Receive tests that mentions this. I also mentioned
this subject twice in this thread:
http://lists.boost.org/boost-users/2009/03/45712.php

If anyone cared or even noticed wasn't clear as there was
no response to that particular point. For some reason I
doubt the author or anyone else bothered to improve the
library in this way and the 1.39 version of the Serialization
library will have the same weak performance in this area.

Additionally and more importantly, now the C++ Middleware
Writer has support for several boost::intrusive containers.
Neither Boost Intrusive nor Boost Serialization have
serialization support for any of the intrusive containers.
The Boost Instrusive containers are superior to the
standard containers in a number of ways, so this gap is
big.

While working to update parts of Boost to be able to
take advantage of C++ 2010 (or 20110), makes sense to
me, I think the items I mentioned should be higher
priority than the C++0x work. It's not as cool or sexy
though. The first item should be relatively easy to
address, which makes it all the more surprising that as
the releases go by it doesn't get addressed. The second
item, though is a different story. Anyway, even if
you are only able to address the first item by the
time BoostCon is over, I'll be impressed. And since
I'm able to point out two weaknesses like this with
one library, there may be other problem areas in
other libraries. This could be incorporated into
the pricing of the conference: $499 gets you into
the C++98 "fixer" and $599 gets you into the C++0x
"fixer."


Brian Wood
Ebenezer Enterprises
www.webEbenezer.net

"Then Samuel took a rock and set it up between
Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer [Rock of
Help] and said, 'Until now the L-RD has helped us.'"

 

[David Abrahams]

Would you agree that recoding that takes advantage of C++ 1998
should be higher priority than C++0x?

In general, maybe. For BoostCon, no.

For example, Boost Serialization doesn't use hinted inserts with
(mulit)set or (multi)map.

Have you submitted a ticket for that at http://svn.boost.org?

I believe Boost Multi Index does. In the
performance section here --
http://webEbenezer.net/comparison.html -- there's a subsection
on Load/Receive tests that mentions this. I also mentioned
this subject twice in this thread:
http://lists.boost.org/boost-users/2009/03/45712.php

If anyone cared or even noticed wasn't clear as there was
no response to that particular point.

Different library maintainers take different approaches to responding to
reports on the Boost list. Specific Trac tickets (especially with
patches attached, as you seem to be able to provide) are a little harder
to leave dangling because to make them go away you have to explicitly
close them, so I suggest you try that approach with one ticket per
issue.

For some reason I doubt the author or anyone else bothered to improve
the library in this way and the 1.39 version of the Serialization
library will have the same weak performance in this area.

Additionally and more importantly, now the C++ Middleware
Writer has support for several boost::intrusive containers.
Neither Boost Intrusive nor Boost Serialization have
serialization support for any of the intrusive containers.
The Boost Instrusive containers are superior to the
standard containers in a number of ways, so this gap is
big.

While working to update parts of Boost to be able to
take advantage of C++ 2010 (or 20110), makes sense to
me, I think the items I mentioned should be higher
priority than the C++0x work.

A Boost bugfixing sprint sounds like a great idea, but that can happen
in cyberspace (the way Ubuntu does it). I invite you to come to the
Boost developers' list and kick one off. I would certainly be grateful
for an excuse to focus on closing Boost Trac tickets. In fact, it
sounds like a good thing to mull over at BoostCon

At BoostCon I want to take advantage of the face-to-face time to do
things that are a bit more educational, less critical-path, and that can
really benefit from having a bunch of people in the same room. I think
exploring how C++0x features interact in real C++ libraries is one of
those.

It's not as cool or sexy though.

That's an issue, too. To make it worthwhile for people to travel across
the country to BoostCon, you need to put "cool" things on the program
;-).

The first item should be relatively easy to address, which makes it
all the more surprising that as the releases go by it doesn't get
addressed.

Remember that addressing any given issue in a Boost library is basically
up to one person: whoever is maintaining that library. Maintainers are
volunteers, and each one arranges his priorities differently. But in
the case of something posted on the -users mailing list whose thread
sorta trailed off, I wouldn't be surprised if the issue has fallen off
the maintainer's radar. I suggest getting it into the tracking system.

The second item, though is a different story. Anyway,
even if you are only able to address the first item by the time
BoostCon is over, I'll be impressed.

Well, it's not really up to me, and I don't /think/ Robert Ramey is
planning to come to BoostCon this year.

And since I'm able to point out two weaknesses like this with one
library, there may be other problem areas in other libraries.

Definitely: https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/report/1

Looks like we have 766 open issues right now :-(

This could be incorporated into the pricing of the conference: $499
gets you into the C++98 "fixer" and $599 gets you into the C++0x
"fixer."

Yeah, not very practical. Those sessions are just two 3-hour segments
out of a whole week of material. We're not making the conference itself
into one big sprint. Take a look at the program:
http://www.boostcon.com/program

Cheers,

--
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com

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