[stdlib-sig] Breaking out the stdlib

[R. David Murray]

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 at 12:53, Michael Foord wrote:
> There seem to be three positions:
>
> 1) Virtually no changes or improvements to the standard library at all - 
> nothing beyond maintaining compatibility with language changes. (Laura)

I think you misrepresent Laura's opinion.  She wants modules that
are mature (stable) to remain in the library, but I did not hear her
object to the addition of improvements.  (She said perhaps she should
have objected to optparse, but that was a hypothetical conditioned on
getopt being removed...if getopt remains (as she expected it would)
she had/has no objection to optparse (or, presumably, argparse)).

> 2) New modules are acceptable but old modules should remain forever. 
> (Antoine)
> 3) New modules are acceptable and eventual removal of old modules is 
> desirable. (Brett, myself, Jesse and Frank)

Laura's objection was to this label of "old modules", as if all modules
beyond a certain age were automatically bad and should be removed.
There is an important distinction to be made between "old, broken,
and not maintained", and "old, mature, and functional".

> Marc-Andre seems to fall somewhere between 1 and 2 and Orestis wants the 
> bleeding edge. (Sorry for these caricatures but it seems approximately 
> right.)
>
> I'd still like to write a longer piece on why I think 1) isn't possible and 
> 3) is preferable to 2)  - but the basic points have all been covered in this 
> thread anyway.

Is anyone actually advocating (1)?  I doubt it.

I think Laura's post was excellent and is worth a careful (re)reading to
understand her points.

--David