Socket wrapper class

[nobody]

Hello,

I have only recently found boost.org. I spent the 
first 4 years of my programming life in Smalltalk; I 
LOVED it and was very sad to see it (virtually) die. 
In the last (very painful) year I have been working in 
C++. A very smart friend of mine once told me "there 
is no sbustitute for hard work". I have been working 
hard in C++ and I am starting to get it ... a little 
bit. What I miss from Smalltalk is the abstraction. I 
have just begun my exploration of Templates and 
Containers/Iterators/Algorightms and I am very 
excited; they give back to me some of the abstraction 
I had in Smalltalk.

I have not noticed any Networking abstractions here. I 
was just reading 
http://www.cuj.com/current/feature.htm?topic=current 
which is an article about wrapping sockets. Does 
boost.org have any thoughts/interest in providing this 
sort of functionality? I would enjoy using abstract 
networking classes. 

If boost.org does not have the time/resources to do it 
at the moment I would be happy to contribute code, 
once my code is worth contributing. I suppose I should 
join.

Are there issues with wrapping such topics that I 
prevent (a) useful implementation(s)?

I apologize if this is not the appropriate place to 
submit this thought or if I have missed the networking 
section somewhere.

This is a great site and I look forward to 
using/contributing to boost.org!

Tyler Ford
digital comms firmware engineer at Agilent Technologies
707-577-2998

[jmaurer]

Logged In: YES 
user_id=53943

Please subscribe to the "boost" maililng list hosted on
yahoogroups.com, and post your suggestion there.  Before
doing so, however, I'd advise checking the message archive
for the previous discussion on the topic.  A boost socket
wrapper should be designed so that misuse is very hard or
impossible.

[squirrel08]

Logged In: YES 
user_id=126443

You got my vote.  I learned to program in Java.  But really
like C++.  For the most part, I would rather use C++ anyday
but...

Coming from Java, I must say that C++ sorely needs a Sockets
API.  And while threading in Java has lot of downpoints, it
is painless to whip up a threaded app.  I can't say the same
for C++.

The CommonC++ API is pretty good but no where near Java's
API, for abstraction, and ease of use.  CommonC++ is a
little flaky, although a great start.

While the boost libs look good for threading I was shocked
to see nothing on sockets.

[Dave Abrahams]

Assigning to Jeff because we can't assign it to Chris and associate him with the ASIO component until he logs into Trac.