[9dev]

I am not a C programmer, but I have been wondering this for a long time: People have been complaining about the standard library for literal decades now. Seemingly, most people/companies write their own abstractions on top of it to ease the pain and limit exposure to the horrors lurking below.

Why has nobody come along and created an alternative standard library yet? I know this would break lots of things, but it’s not like you couldn’t transition a big ecosystem over a few decades. In the same time, entire new languages have appeared, so why is it that the C world seems to stay in a world of pain willingly?

Again, mind you, I’m watching from the outside, really just curious.

[dspillett]

> Why has nobody come along and created an alternative standard library yet?

Probably, IMO, because not enough people would agree on any particular secondary standard such that one would gain enough attention and traction¹ to be remotely considered standard. Everyone who already has they own alternatives (or just wrappers around the current stdlib) will most likely keep using them unless by happenstance the new secondary standard agrees (by definition, a standard needs to be at least somewhat opinionated) closely with their local work.

Also, maintaining a standard, and a public implementation of it, could be a faffy and thankless task. I certainly wouldn't volunteer for that!

[Though I am also an outsider on the matter, so my thoughts/opinions don't have any particular significance and in insider might come along and tell us that I'm barking up the wrong tree]

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[1] This sort of thing can happen, but is rare. jquery became an unofficial standard for DOM manipulation and related matters for quite a long time, to give one example - but the gulf between the standard standard (and its bad common implementations) at the time and what libraries like jquery offered was much larger than the benefits a secondary C stidlib standard might give.

[HexDecOctBin]

> Why has nobody come along and created an alternative standard library yet?

Everybody has created their own standard library. Mine has been honed over a decade, why would I use somebody else's? And since it is designed for my use cases and taste, why would anyone use mine?

[gingerBill]

Because to be _standard_, it would have to come with the compiler toolchain. And if it's scattered around on the internet, people will not use it.

I tried to create my own alternative about a decade ago which eventually influenced my other endeavours.

But another big reason is that people use C and its stdlib because that's what it is. Even if it is bad, its the "standard" and trivially available. Most code relies on it, even code that has its own standard library alternative.

[yusina]

> Why has nobody come along and created an alternative standard library yet?

Because people are so terribly opinionated that the only common denominator is that the existing thing is bad. For every detail that somebody will argue a modern version should have, there will be somebody else arguing the exact opposite. Both will be highly opinionated and for each of them there is probably some scenario in which they are right.

So, the inability of the community to agree on what "good" even means, plus the extreme heterogenity of the use cases for C is probably the answer to your question.