[Waterluvian]

Reading the Python stdlib was a brilliant move a peer encouraged me to do. I learned three themes of stuff:

1. A good look at long lasting, durable pure python.

2. A good look at long lasting, durable C implementations of python (dict is the core of Python. Read the source!)

3. A look at a bunch of libraries that basically never get used and a sense of how they compare to popular third party libraries. (Doing this is why I’ll never complain when a language’s stdlib is small. I get it now.)

[er4hn]

I'd love if you could elaborate on your thoughts for 3. Is it a problem of not being feature complete in unpopular parts of the stdlib?

[Waterluvian]

What I learned is that once a library is in the stdlib, it's usually stuck being maintained for a long time. And then you've got all these libraries that see no use because they were ill-conceived or better ideas came along.

I don't think stdlibs should be barren, but I completely get the ideas of languages like Rust that want to include only the most obvious of candidates and leave the rest for the community to organically evolve.

[int_19h]

urllib vs requests is one prominent example