Finding a developer to hire

Yeah - it was your email footer which mentioned “looking for work” on the Boost mailing list which caught my eye. Specifically this post: http://boost.2283326.n4.nabble.com/Boost-and-clang-under-Windows-tt4652092.html#a4652124

I’d already built up a vague impression of you from previous posts (rabble-rouser, troublemaker, etc :-)) and forwarded this to David as being interesting on 2 fronts… the thread content and your footer.

Fortunately David, Nick and you persevered and I think we all won a watch.

I wonder how much your email footer has had to do with the rate of job offers. Did you notice any relationship between the two?

Unfortunately as usual the Boost community ignored the very wise (if I do so say) advice in that email and they did an almost verbatim replay of almost exactly the same arguments about clang on Windows just recently. This time I ignored them, waste of time. I know it used to drive Dave (Abrahams) up the wall the way they selectively forget “the correct answer ™” and a few months repeat the exact same wingeing verbatim as if you’d never bothered wasting your time answering them before. It’s actually pretty rude as well as bike shedding for the sake of the whinge.

Well, I don’t take their bullshit, that’s for sure, and just because they’re world experts doesn’t mean they’re always right, just usually mostly so. Just this week I threw a grenade in there about their high falluting attitudes towards their half baked Concept-Check rubbish which is only vaguely useful for Fusion, Proto, Spirit and that sort of ilk, but even then isn’t at all actually useful because the C++03 language simply isn’t up to it and it just makes compile time even slower whilst only fixing a small subset of the overall brittleness (i.e. only the brittleness the programmer thinks of, which isnt usually the brittleness you’re experiencing). Now, generalised constexpr lambda template type factories are much more interesting as they let you implement a poor man’s concept predicate engine, and that takes us a good chunk of the way towards C++ 17 Concepts (really a language based concept predicate engine) but in C++ 14. Assuming, that is, I understand Louis’ design of Hana correctly, which I may not.

Almost none. Originally it simply said I was unemployed and looking for work, and I saw a ton of US based serious offers but the H1B visa system made that a non-starter. Once I added “in Ireland” I didn’t see a single approach from anyone related to the Boost community. To be honest Fraser, Boost has been in substantial decline for about two years now, it’s all gone very wrong there culturally.

Also of course Europe has unfortunately become a software tech backwater this past decade - most of the disruptive software innovation happens in the US, and if anyone European does anything interesting in software it gets quickly bought up by the Americans. I’m hoping MaidSafe will be in the vanguard of a European resurgence in software technology, it’s definitely about time, and I can’t see US multinationals being too interested in buying up MaidSafe either which makes it even more interesting.

Niall

Yes this is something folk miss, we were offered to be purchased a while back from a name you would recognise. They did not believe it when I was absolute, this is not for sale, they thought it was a play or something. It’s never been and while I am there never will be for sale. We have too many interesting things to do, after the network is up, I for one am dead keen on massive improvements and with c++14 we can do that if MSVC does get constexpr etc. I also think global compute (and knowledge like cycorp etc.) and physical computing (robotics) are areas that can be challenged and improved upon. Certainly loads of places to be interesting and profitable to us all.

Shame about boost, I really think the work there over the years has been almost an exemplar, but it was always going to be so when there were huge gaps in the standard process. Now the committees are apparently moving along, boost becomes less than it was. I think there is a space though for c++14 additional features (like await etc. as with generic lambdas and constepr, I think we can go a long way (maybe not all the way)) and get back to the TR type approach of a testing ground. At the moment it is a bit like there is a standards compliant mechanism and a boost one that competes at times. I hope it pulls through, I am rooting for it and I know you are to @ned14.

Now go and get a beer you managed to do some pretty amazing magic in rUDP this week so.

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