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I found it always weird that so many languages have a complete lack of graphics support. Even TTYs aren't fully supported. But I guess if C++ realizes that, ot

I found it always weird that so many languages have a complete lack of graphics support. Even TTYs aren't fully supported. But I guess if C++ realizes that, other languages may follow.

kabdib 11y ago
I assume you mean "so many language standard libraries..."; putting graphics in a language (e.g., having the compiler worry about RGBA and suchlike) would not be a great choice. Doing cross-platform graphics well is hard. And the landscape changes pretty rapidly. Take a look at PHIGS, for instance. It's a standard . . . and it really sucks. There's a bunch of common ground at the math level (matrix transforms, quaternions, etc.) and probably some data structures, but actually doing rendering? Whatever you cook up is likely to be a quaint, procrustean bed within five years.
- blablabla123 11y ago
  No doubt that it's hard but just imagine how useful this would be. Setting up a Linux desktop system is notoriously hard, at least if you are not a "computer expert". Configuring hardware that is considered mainstream among Linux professionals most of the times works out of the box. For other hardware too often CLI tools are needed. I would think that these tools often have no graphical interface because there is no standard way to program GUIs in UNIX C. However, HTML5 seems to become the defacto cross-platform graphics standard that seems to takeover many GUI app writing tasks. It's also a good example of a standard that is actually low performance often using outdated methods. WebGL is OpenGL ES 2, DOM is so slow that people wrote React, CSS is actually designed for documents...
EliRivers 11y ago
Given how many platforms don't have monitors to show graphics on, any language that supports graphics would have abandon those platforms or end up dividing into a kind of core language, and then add-on third-party libraries to support things on specific platforms... which is what we have now.

I found it always weird that so many languages have a complete lack of graphics support. Even TTYs aren't fully supported. But I guess if C++ realizes that, other languages may follow.

kabdib 11y ago

I assume you mean "so many language standard libraries..."; putting graphics in a language (e.g., having the compiler worry about RGBA and suchlike) would not be a great choice. Doing cross-platform graphics well is hard. And the landscape changes pretty rapidly. Take a look at PHIGS, for instance. It's a standard . . . and it really sucks. There's a bunch of common ground at the math level (matrix transforms, quaternions, etc.) and probably some data structures, but actually doing rendering? Whatever you cook up is likely to be a quaint, procrustean bed within five years.

blablabla123 11y ago
No doubt that it's hard but just imagine how useful this would be. Setting up a Linux desktop system is notoriously hard, at least if you are not a "computer expert". Configuring hardware that is considered mainstream among Linux professionals most of the times works out of the box. For other hardware too often CLI tools are needed. I would think that these tools often have no graphical interface because there is no standard way to program GUIs in UNIX C. However, HTML5 seems to become the defacto cross-platform graphics standard that seems to takeover many GUI app writing tasks. It's also a good example of a standard that is actually low performance often using outdated methods. WebGL is OpenGL ES 2, DOM is so slow that people wrote React, CSS is actually designed for documents...

EliRivers 11y ago

Given how many platforms don't have monitors to show graphics on, any language that supports graphics would have abandon those platforms or end up dividing into a kind of core language, and then add-on third-party libraries to support things on specific platforms... which is what we have now.