standard libraries don't behave like standard 'libraries'

[Sriram Srinivasan]

I guess why every programming language has some kind of a 'standard
library' built in within it.
In my view it must not be called as a 'library' at all. what it does
is like a 'bunch of built-in programs ready-made to do stuff'.

Lets see what a 'library' does:

1. offers books for customers
 1.1 lets user select a book by genre, etc
 1.2 lets user to use different books of same genre, etc
 1.3 lets user to use books by same author, etc for different genre

2. keeps track of all the books + their genre
 2.1 first knows what all books it has at present
 2.2 when new book comes it is added to the particular shelf sorted by
genre,author,edition, etc.
 2.3 when books become old they are kept separately for future
reference
 2.4 very old books can be sent to a museum/discarded

I guess no standard library does the minimum of this but wants to be
called a library.

As a python user I always wanted the standard library to have such
features so the user/developer decides to use what set of libraries he
want.

consider the libraries for 2.5 ,2.6, 3K are all available to the user,
the user selects what he wants with something like.

use library 2.5 or use library 2.6 etc.

The 2 main things that the library management interface has to do is
intra library management and inter library management.

intra library mgmt- consider books to be different libraries
(standard, commercial, private, hobby, etc)
inter library mgmt- consider books to be modules inside a library
( standard, commercial, private, hobby, etc)

if somehow we could accomplish this kind of mother of a all plugin/ad-
hoc system that is a real breakthrough.

Advantages:

1. new modules can be added to the stream quickly
2. let the user select what he want to do
3. modules (that interdepend on each other) can be packed into small
distribution and added to the stream quickly without waiting for new
releases
4. solution to problems like py 2.x and 3.x
5. users can be up to date
6. documentation becomes easy + elaborate to users
7. bug managing is easy too
8. more feed back
9. testing also becomes easy
10. many more , i don't know.. you have to find.

Python already has some thing like that __future__ stuff. but my
question is how many people know that? and how many use that? most of
them wait until old crust gets totally removed. that is bad for user
and python. that is why problems like py2.x py3.x originate. If there
is a newer book collection it must always be available at the library.
i must not go to another library to get that book.

These are just my views on the state of the standard libraries and to
make them state-of-the-art..! ;)