Maybe it's not part of C++ because this kind of initialization is trivial to do, and more readable, with helper classes and constructors. Just a theory - I wasn't even aware of designated initializers.

What I find pathetic is all of the C programmers who still think C++ is slow, bloated, or impossible to understand.

auto definitely makes writing looping constructs with iterators shorter/easier, without additional typedefs, but by far the nicest use for it is in writing templates, where a specialization or type-dependent mapping my occur in the template using a helper function, and you don't necessarily know what the intermediate type might be. Sure, you could use some complicated typedefs, which may require additional traits classes, but auto handles it nicely.

I should have a put a smiley.

And then he went on to write Facebook. I'm not sure I like this guy.

Okay okay I'll get off your lawn!

Yikes! Put your clothes and phone in a burn barrel and take a shower immediately!

And don't forget your towel.

Like thinking about watching Dancing with the Stars, or how many likes the picture of their breakfast might get.

I was a senior in high school and wound up at SIGGRAPH in Boston in 1989. I was doing graphic design and programming for a small company that did medical imaging on the Amiga and we were in the Amiga pavilion. Nearby were some guys who had developed an X11 server and tools to build common X11 programs, with an optical three-button mouse. I think it was Dale Luck's company - I found a relevant announcement:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.sys.amiga/ks3jiuCT5oQ

In 1992 I went to work for a company doing graphics software for the film industry. I was supposed to be writing Amiga software, but when I showed up they pointed to a $30K SGI 3000 system they had just bought and said "learn that". That began my crash course all things UNIX, X11, Motif, and gl. One of the cool things about SGIs was their gl api (the precursor to OpenGL) that integrated with the X server, so you could log into another SGI box and run 3D graphics programs with amazing speed remotely.

I like it. It seems to lose some of the annoying features of objective-c and bring in some of the nice features of python.
E.G. for i in 0..3 { stuff }; or: for i in list_of_things { stuff }; like python.
and tuples allowing multiple return values, like in python
and getting rid of the need for semicolons, like python

Too bad they didn't just invest their energy into compiling Python to their runtime.

I do. I work at home.

This was the book that opened my eyes to defensive programming. It's pretty old now, but apparently there a newer version.

Last orders please!

Shouldn't we lie down, put a paper bag over our head or something?

Now THAT I would pay extra for.