[bigstrat2003]

Yeah, strongly agree. The lack of batteries in the Rust stdlib is by far the biggest mistake in the language.

The first reason is because the stdlib is the only thing you can always count on being there. People are often in situations where they can't download library packages due to security procedures, and have to rely on just the stdlib. People like to complain about urllib2 still being in Python even though it's not really used any more, but I've been in situations where urllib2 was the only thing available and I was damn glad it existed.

The second reason is because the way Rust does things is horribly confusing. What's the best crate to use for X? If you are a regular in the community you probably know, but a newbie is going to have no idea which of the many available options to pick. Whereas something within the stdlib is always a reasonable choice, even if it isn't the best choice.

I really hate that the Rust community in general is so dogmatic about this topic. Having so much functionality outside the stdlib makes the language worse, not better.