Cairo 2D Graphics May Become Part of ISO C++

An anonymous reader sends this news from Phoronix: "The C++ standards committee is looking at adopting a Cairo C++ interface as part of a future revision to the ISO C++ standard to provide 2D drawing. Herb Sutter, the chair of the ISO C++ standards committee, sent out a message to the Cairo developers this week about their pursuit to potentially standardize a basic 2D drawing library for ISO C++. The committee right now is looking at using a C++-ified version of Cairo. Sutter wrote, 'we are currently investigating the direction of proposing a mechanically C++-ified version of Cairo. Specifically, "mechanically C++-ified" means taking Cairo as-is and transforming it with a one-page list of mechanical changes such as turning _create functions into constructors, (mystruct*, int length) function parameters to vector<struct>& parameters, that sort of thing — the design and abstractions and functions are unchanged.'"

Comments

Re:Sure, why not

[VanGarrett]

As something of a .NET programmer myself, I can testify to the veracity of this. .NET does a great deal for you, and I really think the handicap has prevented me from learning what's really going on.

Re:Sure, why not

[dreamchaser]

It's sad but true. My wife works in the CS department at a major University, and I'm appalled at what they are churning out with regards to graduates. I know I'll probably get modded down and see the inevitable jokes about 'get off my lawn' and such, but it's really true. The vast majority of new programmers are more or less clueless aside from pushing out cookie cutter bloated code.

Re:That's unfortunate

[mraeormg]

While AGG is one of the most cleanest and high quality 2D rendering APIs, it's improbable that AGG will be accepted by the c++ committee, Herb Sutter works for microsoft, and AGG's author is very critical of many graphical features of windows, like the sub par font rendering. An example of this is the the dialog window for enabling high dpi font scaling.
http://i1.wp.com/www.istartedsomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/dpi480_3_l.jpg

Re:But... why?

[mytec]

So, my question really is why they are doing this? I'm betting the answer is not one where they have actual usecases in mind.

There was a keynote done by Herb Sutter this past September and at roughly the 57 minute mark of his presentation Keynote: Herb Sutter - One C++ he shows a 15 LOC example of numbers being input and then output sorted. He then said, "We need to get past the VT100 era." He continued saying that the standard C++ program cannot even exercise the abilities of the VT100 which has underscore and bold, etc. Pure, portable C++ code cannot even drive a 1970s era VT100.

If you continue watching you'll see the point Herb is trying to make and that point may help explain why they are looking to do this.

Re:Sure, why not

[ShanghaiBill]

I wonder how many of us, who now have a great deal more experience, would have said the same thing regarding 1980's college freshmen.

I would. I graduated in the 1970's and was a manager in the 1980's. The majority of the CS graduates that I interviewed back then were worthless. I see less incompetence when interviewing new grads today, but that is probably because I have become better at pre-screening resumes.

Re:Sure, why not

[rsilvergun]

Actually you turn away 95% of ppl who send in resumes because 30 years of attacks on the middle class have let you be _way_ too picky with your candidates and to force people to pay to train themselves.

Self taught programmers aren't superior, they're just more desperate. They'll give you 20 hours of free labor a week to keep up. People are people. Your expectations are either a) unrealistic or b) only possible due to a warped labor market that exists to enrich a lucky few (re: 1%).