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Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieee org> wrote:
> I think that's what kept me and many away from "serious" languages like
> C/C++ for a long time. No book I picked up covered what I thought should
> be straightforward: How do I color a pixel on the screen. Doing graphics
> seemed to be a lot more complicated.
> I didn't have Internet access, nor did I know anyone who knew much
> programming, so no one pointed me to better ways to do graphics in C,
> nor was I aware of other languages where it may be easier.
It's funny that even today graphics in C/C++ development (and in fact quite
many other languages) is a difficult issue.
What makes it ironic is that a large part of C/C++ programs out there are
heavily graphical (most prominently the computer games), and seems like
everybody just somehow manages to get the graphics done, but when you ask
for a simple way of getting graphics, they will usually shrug and say that
it's a bit complicated... (Because it *is* a bit complicated.)
Also, rather curiously, most programming languages which have integrated
graphics routines, are usually the most inefficient ones, and thus the least
adept for making eg. heavily-graphical games. There are a few exceptions
(such as ActionScript, although its capabilities for making games is quite
limited, as it's not the most efficient of languages around), but they often
tend to be a bit inaccessible (such as precisely ActionScript).
The reason why in older computers it was easier to draw graphics was that
the language was very integrated to the system in question and didn't need
to be portable to a wide range of different systems. You had one fixed OS
(no updates or anything), one fixed hardware (no different graphics chips,
CPUs, amounts of RAM, etc) and one fixed scripting language which was tied
to that precise system.
Immediately when you started having different users with different
hardware setups, the whole graphics programming stumbled on a huge problem.
--
- Warp
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