What's missing from python?

[Skip Montanaro]

    Peter> The 'batteries included' stuff is more a distribution / packaging
    Peter> issue than the standard library. At least coming from Tcl where
    Peter> we have a 'batteries included' distribution including all sorts
    Peter> of nice things.  However this does not mean that they are part of
    Peter> the standard library.

    >> See:
    >> 
    >> http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/12.html
    >> 
    >> and search for "Frank Stajano".  My guess would be that Frank's paper
    >> got the ball rolling for the "batteries included" concept in Tcl.

    Cameron> I confirm that.  That's verifiably how it happened.

    Cameron> I also don't see that as contradicting what Peter wrote.

Peter said, "The 'batteries included' stuff is more a distribution /
packaging issue than the standard library."  As I recall from Frank's talk
and the quote in the above URL, Frank was definitely using "batteries
included" to mean the stuff that was included as part of the standard
library.

Python's batteries have met my needs quite well.  Refreshing my memory with
my site-packages directory, I can think of only a few things that I've
gotten from elsewhere over the years:

    * timeout_socket - now supplanted by socket's own timeout feature

    * PIL at one point where I was messing around with some simple image
      processing

    * mxDateTime - now supplanted for my meager needs by datetime

    * Zope, Quixote, WebWare - all really more than you'd need/want in the
      standard distribution I think, and all really cross the boundary
      between library and application

    * Object Craft's csv module (and a couple other csv modules) - now
      supplanted by the csv module

    * xmlrpclib - now in the core distribution

    * psyco

    * psycopg and MySQLdb

    * TextFile

Of those, I don't really expect the web app framework stuff to turn up in
the core (too many to choose from, no "one best way", too big), PIL's
probably too specialized for the core, psyco is still largely experimental
(though once it stabilizes and supports at least one non-Intel CPU I think
it should be considered), database connectors probably don't belong in the
core because there are too many databases to connect to, and TextFile
(transparently gzip files on output) could have been written easily enough
had I not stumbled upon it first.

Skip