Standard library: the "general and popular" rule, aka #1
I'll be blunt: Please remove it.
If you check the discussion lists, both for ESL on SourceForge and here about
some include files, most recently math.e, you will notice that the main reason
why they stagnated and eventually died is the debate over what is generic and
what is "specific" or "rare", hence to be kept out in application of the "general
and popular" principle.
If someone has the minimalist urge and doesn't use something, s/he will post and
say in substance: Don't include this, I don't use it. Add a few like this, and
you come up with only a handful of additions to the current Eu distribution. At
this point, the purpose of the extension usually vanishes.
Look at most standard libraries in other languages. Perhaps there isn't a single
programmer in that language that ever used 80% of routines in the library. I'll
get flamed, but this not a liability, but, to the contrary, an asset. This is how
you get people to program, because they see some flesh they can already put in
their program, not just bare bones.
To put it otherwise, a stdlib is useful because one can find in it most
everything that might be standard for some subgroup of users. Your rule calls for
a greater common denominator. Eu is in its current shape largely because of this
error, repeated over time. Let's learn: what works is the lesser common multiple
instead.
My own alternative proposal would be: generic and useful in some known area of
programming.
CChris
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