On 4 oct, 19:15, "Alf P. Steinbach" <al...@start.no> wrote:
The argument that the library implementation may become more complex, that hey,
if we're to present a practical interface then we have to do some implementation
level stuff in the implementation instead of forcing that on the client code, I
fail to understand that mode of thinking: the purpose of a library is (or should
ideally be!) to make client code simpler by taking on some burdens, not to be as
pretty as possible when viewed through certain colored glasses.
Rather, it should make them understand using a type erasure mechanism
(which is what std/boost::function is, a type erasure for a type that
is callable) has overhead, and that they should avoid using it when
they can.
You can perfectly do binding without using type erasure, and that is
actually the most typical use (when for example setting a member
function to call for a higher-order function, like the algorithms of
the standard library).
Mixing the two doesn't help the users, on the contrary, it makes them
overuse type erasure when they don't need it because they confuse the
two fundamentally different concepts.
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