What's missing from python?

[Peter Hansen]

John Burton wrote:

> One of the reasons I like python so much is that the standard 
> installation comes with a whole lot of libraries to do lots of useful 
> things but there seem to be a few things missing from the standard 
> library which would be useful in many projects:
> 
> Encryption - AES and 3DES. Possibly RSA and Certificate processing.
> DNS - Something better than gethostbyaddr for looking up other record 
> types.
> Database - Something suitable for small projects / prototypes like 
> pysqlite or something in pure python even.
> SSL/TLS - Some useful support...
> 
> A lot of projects seem to need some of those. It's easy enough to 
> install extras to do those thing but they are all things where it would 
> be nice to have something in the standard library that you could rely on 
> being there.
> 
> Is there any reason why those things are not already in the standard 
> library?

Yes, they aren't mature enough to be in there yet (because the work
is not complete, probably because not enough people are helping).

That's at least a partial answer.  Were I actually one who helped
with the core work on these things myself, I would doubtless add
"contributions are welcome!"  :-)

-Peter