Re:Thoughts on Rust bloat
by kbenson on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @09:35PM
(#20763830)
> So if we had added it to std many years ago, we might find ourselves with an API that we regret! It's tough.
That is the ultimate problem of batteries includes vs a small standard library distilled into a specific example.
People used to tout Python's "batteries included" line as positive almost universally a decade and more ago. Then better replacements were developed, and those batteries started looking less appealing.
There's really no escaping that while including any base functionality. Either you include it and portions will be stale later as better interfaces and paradigms are developed, or you don't, and you risk slower adoption and harder usability as people need to figure out solutions for common tasks, even if that solution is as simple as find the crate that provides it. Because eventually that becomes a problem not of finding the crate, but finding the best crate out of the multiple that exist, which itself causes fragmentation of the common developer experience (and thus makes it harder to share knowledge and have a good community).
That is the ultimate problem of batteries includes vs a small standard library distilled into a specific example.
People used to tout Python's "batteries included" line as positive almost universally a decade and more ago. Then better replacements were developed, and those batteries started looking less appealing.
There's really no escaping that while including any base functionality. Either you include it and portions will be stale later as better interfaces and paradigms are developed, or you don't, and you risk slower adoption and harder usability as people need to figure out solutions for common tasks, even if that solution is as simple as find the crate that provides it. Because eventually that becomes a problem not of finding the crate, but finding the best crate out of the multiple that exist, which itself causes fragmentation of the common developer experience (and thus makes it harder to share knowledge and have a good community).