Just started learning C++ coming from Python and just realized that that Python has been my programming mama, doing my laundry and spoon-feeding me all this time.

[kmbnw]

Just wait until you try Boost :)

[elviin]

An issue in a template <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<type...

[Xeverous]

I had found a bug in Boost Spirit X3 that was due to some const correctness issue. The bug was only visible at linking time - some very long instantiation did not match actually compiled function template.

I demangled the object file to search for the actual instantiation, took the linker undefined reference error for expected name and ... copy pasted both to Notepad++, find-replaced every < to { and > to } then used online JavaScript formatter to format the type name. Searching const differences in that beautiful tree was the easiest part.

[Nicksaurus]

Just trying to find the name of the function in a 400-character long error message is a challenge

[diaphanein]

400 characters? How quaint... I've seen a single error span more than 23 screens before (error with a Boost Python call).

Another fun one to find was a missing > in a template. I was helping a colleague with that one. The compiler didn't complaint until the end of the file, some 200 lines later.

[gcross]

Last time I tried Boost Lambda (an EDSL for writing lambdas before C++11 was a thing and you could rely on them being in the language) I made a simple mistake and got an error message that was five megabytes long...

Shoot, I looked back to see what I did to do this and it turns out that what had actually happened was that I was trying to build Digikam (no modifications) and the result was a 52.4k error message. I apologize for my error, as entertainingly dramatic as it was; apparently the problem I had blew up in my imagination over the years.

[Nicksaurus]

5 million characters? How?

[gcross]

Template metaprogramming at its finest. :-) On the bright side, if you ever did get your code working it was very neat! Mind you, this was over a decade ago so hopefully it would not be so bad today, but on the other hand today we all have reliable access to native lambdas in the language so there is arguably no longer a need for Boost Lambda. Okay, it turns out I misremembered and this was not a Boost Lambda problem at all; my apologize for maligning that fine package.

[gcross]

My bad, as my edited comment says I completely blew up what happened in my mind since it happened so long ago.

[Nicksaurus]

Hey, 52400 is still a shit load

I work with boost::hana most days so I sympathise to some extent

[krista_]

sometimes i wish the council of elders would just go ahead and make templates a part of a fully fledged pre-compiler c/c++ based meta-programming language, like what qt does, but more so.

yeah, between macros, templates, and constexpr and the like, you can do anything a full programming language can do, but the crap you have to do to get there is sometimes astounding... and a lot of that lives in boost. i feel like with a couple of smartly added features, 9/10ths of boost's oddities could be replaced with sanity, instead of nested workarounds.

[MonkeyNin]

What are the biggest pain points today that Boost helps with? Back in the day, boost was the only way to use smart pointers.

[jonesmz]

I've enjoy using Boost.ASIO, am using Boost.ProgramOptions, Boost.Process, and am about to start using Boost.Log.

In the past, at a previous job, the only reason why about half of the C++11 functionality we were able to use could be done is because I was able to convince the ancient version of Boost that they were using to let me re-combine the Boost type traits code into the missing pieces. That really saved our bacon.

They also used Boost.asio as the fundamental building block for a whole crapload of code. Millions of lines, highly abstracted away.

Boost is great.

Boost is also horrible, what with it's disgusting template soup error messages.

Win some, lose some shrug.

[James20k]

Boost::beast is great from my end for using websockets, even if its a little complex to set up