caelumvox - building on a cloud

C++ has some major shortcomings. The STL doesn't include a hash map using custom keys, its string to number converters make it hard to detect errors, and there just seem to be so many languages that are bundled with better standard libraries (look at Java and its support for Time/Date, atomic type conversion). However, I am a huge fan of C++. I like the fact that there are unsigned types (unlike Java), type safety makes code less error prone (unlike python, ruby, and perl), it is polymorphic and inheritable (unlike C), its reference types provide speed, and it is ported more often to embedded platforms than any other language besides maybe C. So, how are these strengths leveraged by overcoming the obvious weaknesses? Enter Boost . It has solutions for many of the shortcomings of C++ and some very useful utilities as well. In a recent development project, I used Boost as a supplement to C++ within the Windows environment because I wasn't sold on the .NET framework, and I wante