[Development] QtCS 2017 QtCore sessions

[Alejandro Exojo]

On Saturday 02 December 2017 19:11:23 Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> > > And, c'mon, std::optional's API is just not going to be topped by
> > > QOptional. What should they do? snake_case vs. camelCase? That's what
> > > we need to invest several man-days of development work in, to rename
> > > the functions and stick a Q in front of the class name?
> >
> > There's one thing that a QOptional could do that std::optional can't:
> > be available for all Qt users
> > in a time span of a couple of months.

True. And that, in my very humble opinion, highlights a common problem that 
people face in projects in all languages: wanting to use a standard 
functionality that is not yet available in the platforms that you have to 
support. Many other languages are able to "polyfill"/shim not-yet-standardized 
classes or functions (even members) in a clean way, by adding a 3rd party 
library and done. I would be fine having the same developer experience in C++ 
even if I had to change name spaces and includes, but doesn't seem usual 
practice in C++.

> And another thing: be properly documented in a way that people who
> are not CS phd's can understand. std completely and utterly fails
> in that. Parts of Qt's docs are bad enough, but there's nothing in
> cppreference.com that would pass muster for my gsoc students.

I wholeheartedly agree. I understand the argument of the lambda in find_if in a 
somewhat intuitive way, but the explanations that one finds there about it are 
hugely discouraging to me (full of standardese), even if it's been some years 
using C++. It's not rare to see pages documenting a class or function, that, 
instead of giving examples of its usage, show instead three possible 
implementations. When you are trying to understand how it's used, or why it's 
useful. :-(

And a 3rd point, that not necessarily applies to QOptional if everything is 
templated and inline, but I think still the main blocker for using more 
standard API is the lack of ABI stability. Yes, that's misfeature for some, 
but it's the current rule, so ignoring it is not helping the conversation, 
IMHO.

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