Beyond the C++ Standard Library: An Introduction to Boost (Paperback)

  This book is not just a rehash of the online documentation of the boost library. This book is way more than that, it's a why you should use these libraries and how to book. Not a how to write the libraries, or program in C++. As such this book is geared toward the intermediate to advanced C++ programmer who has heard about www.boost.org but isn't using all of the libraries yet.

This is not an unbiased review, as I reviewed the chapter on Lambda as I'm one of the original authors of the library. However I'm not on the payroll so you can trust me when I say, buy the book, you'll be glad you did.

Why should you care? Well boost is a proving ground for many of the upcoming C++ 0X standard libaries. Before the libraries get accepted by the standards committee, often there is reference implementation done for boost. And those that don't make the standard cut, well, often its not poor quality code, but rather a narrow focus library. Boost may have just the thing you need, so check it out.

And as every good programmer knows, the fastest way to use new code is to get stuff that has documentation (this book) that is tested, and is free. (sorry the book isn't free, but the code is!)

So save yourself several days of head scratching and buy the book.

  All professional C++ programmers should become familiar with this freely available source of high quality, peer reviewed C++ code. Boost is a collection of libraries that are designed to complement the C++ Standard Library and provide very useful solutions to difficult program design tasks. This book is a very good introduction to Boost. There is an introductory chapter that gives a brief description of each Boost library (almost 60 of them as of version 1.32). Seven of these libraries have been accepted for the upcoming C++ Standard Library Technical Report which means that they will probably become part of the next version of the C++ standard. The remainder of the book gives a more in-depth tutorial introduction of a good sampling of 12 Boost libraries. This material complements the documentation on the Boost.org web site. It provides clear examples that illustrate the use and usefulness of each library.

My only complaint is that they didn't make the book longer and include more libraries in this detailed treatment. Some of the libraries are very extensive and have other books devoted specifically to them. (See The Boost Graph Library, by Siek, Lee and Sumsdaine; and C++ Template Metaprogramming, by Abrahams and Gurtovoy which covers Boost MPL.) But I think the book would be more valuable if some of the other libraries like Multi-index, Format and Serialization had been explained in more detail. Articles on these have appeared in recent issues of the C/C++ User's Journal. Still, this is a great book to have. I highly recommend it and expect that expanded editions will come out in the future. Already Boost 1.33 has been released with with 5 new libraries and significant updates to existing libraries. C++ programming has never been better.

  This is really what the Boost community (www.boost.org) needs to increase the awareness of its excellent libraries! Not to mention how much I needed it to improve my programming!

As a programmer, you have so many task specific features to implement, that you really don't have the time (or even interest) to implement the fundamentals. Yes, you have the C++ standard library to assist you, but the Boost libraries take you to an entirely new level. And the Boost libraries have the absolute top quality, which most of us just can not achieve even if we had all the time in the world. Yet, the libraries *are* fundamental in the sense that they solve common programming issues (and also in many cases show the path to upcoming C++ standards). It is hard to imagine an application making use of *all* the Boost libraries, but I'd say that it is equally hard to imagine one which would not benefit from any Boost library.

[Did you get this far without ever having visited http://www.boost.org? Then now is the time to do that...

Done? Ok, let's continue with the book.]

Without any statistics to support me, I am pretty convinced that the average Boost user is far more experienced in C++ than most of us who make a living out of C++ programming (let alone those who don't). This book will help to flatten out this bias, by making Boost easy to understand and immediately useful for those who read it. It is clearly written - technically correct while never being boring, even if you read from first to last page. It includes many code examples, which repeatedly made me associate to uses in my programming. I would have liked the examples and the Boost libraries on an accompanying CD, but this is no major concern - it's better to get the freshest release from boost.org anyway. I read the book basically from start to end, skimming a couple of libraries that I found no immediate use for. The book covers 12 libraries out of 58 which makes me looking forward to a follow-up book covering yet another 12 or so libraries.