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

[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: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

[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%).