[dietr1ch]

If all the code was crammed into the std library it'd be fine?

Functions need to build on top of simpler functions to be able to abstract problems and tackle them one at a time. There's innate complexity around and without trying to tame it into smaller functions/packages it seems you'll end up in a worse spot.

[hamandcheese]

Not OP, but more code in stdlib does indeed sound better.

I'm not against abstraction and re-use. What I don't like is that for every given thing I want to do, there are multiple crates that offer the same functionality, and it can be really fatiguing trying to vet them. And it is truly a rarity to find a crate that is past the 1.0 version milestone.

Compare to golang for example. You can get quite far in go without needing to pull in any libraries. But in rust you need a library for even a basic http request.

[dietr1ch]

Trying to get everything into std requires a lot of work that I think gets harder when considering Rust's goals of being low level and paying only for what you use. Not having finalised some aspects of the language itself would also slow this down even more.

I'd rather have libraries built with more freedom and the possibility of having experimental stuff around meanwhile the std worthy solution lands, and if things work fine without them in the standard library then it makes sense to keep them out.

Rust may be lacking an easier way to shop for recommended libraries for common problems. There should be a path to discover all the good and best libraries for each problem. crates.io takes a stab at having this information, but I think more handholding and some sort of community seal of approval is needed.

[tucson-josh]

I'm not the OP here, but I did write the blog post. I have mixed thoughts on how much should be part of std. I think that what we're seeing is a class of library where we could see a new level introduced to open languages like rust that sits somewhere above std, but is maintained and blessed by a broader group than just the nebulous community. Rust's separation of std from no-std is a good example of tiers that I think we could see evolve. Another example in the same category as clap would be serde and some of the specific serde implementations like serde-yaml that is now in a really painful unmaintained/forked status. Maybe these are things to push for more broadly in the rust community.

[msgodel]

I think Rust's std really wants to be just the runtime. Most language stds are runtime + common utilities and then often there's an extra set of common environment libraries with varying levels of distinction.

[msgodel]

Yeah I was a little surprised to discover the standard library doesn't even include regex. That's kind of extreme. Even most C environments have that.

[eeZah7Ux]

Yes, having a good std library would be fine. It would really limit the proliferation of crates.