Boost contains over 120 libraries and counting, with over 70 authors and maintainers. There are many parts of Boost that I will never use (e.g. most of the pre c++11 libs), but the pros of having it available when you need it far outweigh the cons.

If a particular library is costing you more in compile time than it's worth in convenience, just rm -rf it from your Boost install -- better yet, write a script to prepend `static_assert(false, "this header is banned by decree of vvanders");` to the top of the banned headers.

There's plenty in Boost to love -- don't let a few rotten apples spoil the bunch.

Full disclosure: I'm a Boost developer

So I should hack apart my install just to get to some basic level of compiler performance?

Last time I looked at boost pulling in any header would pull in all of them, that's why it takes so long to compile. In this day with any modern C++0x11 compiler I don't really see the need for boost.

> Last time I looked at boost pulling in any header would pull in all of them

This has literally never been true.

Just include a header and see how it affects your compile time. I can't confirm what you're saying for example.

I value my developing times more than anything. Boost is one library which is developed and tested on almost every c++ target platform, providing us with stable, tested, and performing common utilities to speed up your developments and run anywhere.

Reasons not to use boost: - My code is one monolithic spaghetti and I do not use unit tests. - I do not want to learn Boost. - I don't trust template hippies.

Not using Boost is an irrational decision and you know it.