Trip report boostcon 2008

Notes are at this page

Day -1: Saturday, May 3rd 2008

"Do not walk outside this area" is quite a funny text when you're flying at 10000 feet and "this area" is the right wing of your airplane. Well, I think it's funny anyway...

Today is a day of travel. Getting up at 6.30 am (gmt+2), arriving in Aspen at 6.30pm (mountain time).

As it happens, Dan Marsden is on the same flight from London to Denver, so we spend most of the time talking polymorphic lambda, data structure traversal and, foolishly, not sleeping.

The room at the Aspen Meadows is as great as it was last year, the hamburger is decent. Sleeping appears to be quite problematic at 8000ft altitude.

Day 0: Sunday, May 4th 2008

Today is the day of registration, drinks with some of the other participants.

My laptop won't be available until Monday (complex story involving encrypted harddisks, passwords and public holidays), so I'm working on my presentation by using an actual pen on actual paper. Really nice. If only I could read my own handwriting...

Before dinner I meet up with Dan and co-presenter Jared. During dinner, Dan makes a few suggestions that make me reconsider the whole structure of my presentation. I think I can still use the slides I've prepared, but there definitely needs to be more attention to all the the design alternatives that were discarded and the reasons for that.

Day 1: Monday, May 5th 2008

I'm planning to attend:

• library in a week (liaw) -- Extending boost.algorithms.
• boost.extension and boost.reflection.
• threading with boost.
• maybe: C++0x Today: features for building better libraries.

Day 2: Tuesday, May 6th 2008

I'm planning to attend:

• liaw
• container streaming library. (Well, I'm presenting it, so I kind of need to be there I guess).
• possibly: serialization.
• Implementing a mini boost.fusion using C++0x.

It turns out I have been volunteered for the 'simple algorithms' team at liaw, so this time I really need to pay attention to what is being said...

The container streaming library went a lot better than I expected. Lot's of feedback. All constructive and brought in friendly tones :-) Consensus seems to be that it is a library that could be proposed for boost, especially after making the modifications that have been suggested.

Day 4: Thursday, May 8th 2008

It's snowing in Aspen!

• Network Programming With Boost
• Authors Corner: Boost.System
• Authors Corner: Boost.Parameter
• A new library for working with hierarchical data types
• The prospective boost lexer library and its integration with spirit v2