[vtk-developers] Updates to VTK's coding standard page

[Will Schroeder]

Based on my experiences in the ITK world where templates, typedefs, and STL
runs wild, and wrapping is a constant battle (you should see the size of
the libraries), a cleaner simpler approach has been extremely beneficial.
W


On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:39 PM, David Gobbi <david.gobbi at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 3:11 PM, Will Schroeder
> <will.schroeder at kitware.com> wrote:
> > Kyle to a large extent it's historical. Twenty years ago many things were
> > brittle including compilers, STL, and wrapping. This led to a desire to
> keep
> > things clean and simple. For example the wrapping process choked for a
> long
> > time on fancy STL stuff. I also am of the opinion that the API to STL is,
> > shall we say, poor plus it affects compilation time. We wanted to hide
> some
> > of the nastiness from the wrapping process, from users, and encourage
> > passing data through simpler exchange mechanisms. The PIMPL approach also
> > hides the underlying implementation which provides more freedom if you
> want
> > to change things up at a later time. I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple of
> > other reasons, but Bill is in Santa Cruz for the month so I doubt he'll
> chip
> > in ;-)
>
> You say twenty years ago?  Even ten years ago all the most widely-used
> compilers were fairly brittle.  Microsoft is very wishy-washy its standards
> support up to this very day.
>
> Anyway, my main issue with STL is that, currently, APIs that use STL
> are not wrapped.  And in my mind, that deficit strongly outweighs any
> benefit.  Of course we could wrap a chunk of the STL, but I don't know
> where the resources for such a project would come from.  In any case
> I'd rather be conservative about the interface just to keep it consistent.
>
>  - David
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-- 
William J. Schroeder, PhD
Kitware, Inc.
28 Corporate Drive
Clifton Park, NY 12065
will.schroeder at kitware.com
http://www.kitware.com
(518) 881-4902
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