I fully agree with you. It is the reason that i first explain them how it should be done (i.e when recommending boost::variant, i explain they should in general use a discriminated union. And i try not to say it's just a "magic boost thing" but show how they in principle implemented it. When i recommend boost::shared_ptr, i explain they would need to use a pointer - but it's better to use a smart pointer that has shared ownership semantics.). I try not to say just "use boost::xxx" when i see the questioner is a beginner. It is a language that's not just as simple to use as some scripting language. One has to understand the stuff one uses, because the language does not protect the programmer from doing bad things.
Of course it's not possible for novices to understand everything from the start on. But they should understand what their boost library solves and how it does it basically.
You can't compare this with learning processors or assembly language first. Similar it's not important to know how the bit-pattern of a null-pointer looks like. Knowledge of those are irrelevant in learning programming with C++. But pointers, array or any other basic things in C++ is not. One doesn't get around learning them before using [boost|std]::shared_ptr or [boost|std]::array successfully. These are things that has to be understood first in order to use the boost utilities successfully in my opinion. It's not about details like how to manually implement the pimpl-idiom using raw pointers - that's not the point I'm making. But the point is that one should first know basic things about pointers or the other parts a boost library helps with (for pointers, what they are and what they are good for, for example). Just look at the shared_ptr manual and try to get it without knowing about pointers. It's impossible.
And it's important to always point them to the appropriate boost manual. Boost manuals are high quality.
