- backward compatbility: a big std lib increases the risk of incompatible changes and the cost of long term support
- pushing developers to be mindful of minimal systems: a sort of unrelated example is how a lot of node library use the 'fs' module just because it is there creating a huge pain point for browser bundling. If the stdlib did not have a fs module this would happen a lot less
- a desire to let the community work it out and decide the best API/implementations before blessing a specific library as Standard.
In my opinion a dynamic set of curated library with significantly shorted backward compatibility guarantees is the best of both worlds.
- less burden on the stdlib maintainers (which are already overworked!)
- faster iteration on those libraries, since you don't need to wait a new release of the compiler to get updates for those libraries (which would take at least 12-16 weeks depending on when the PR is merged)
- backward compatbility: a big std lib increases the risk of incompatible changes and the cost of long term support
- pushing developers to be mindful of minimal systems: a sort of unrelated example is how a lot of node library use the 'fs' module just because it is there creating a huge pain point for browser bundling. If the stdlib did not have a fs module this would happen a lot less
- a desire to let the community work it out and decide the best API/implementations before blessing a specific library as Standard.
In my opinion a dynamic set of curated library with significantly shorted backward compatibility guarantees is the best of both worlds.