An explosion of transitive dependencies
A small standard library means an explosion in transitive dependencies. A more comprehensive standard library helps you minimize dependencies. Don't misunderstand me: in a real-world project, it is practically impossible to have zero dependencies.
Armin Ronacher called for a vibe shift among programmers and I think that this actually exists already. Everyone I speak to on this topic has agreed that minimizing dependencies is ideal.
Rust and JavaScript, with their incredibly minimal standard libraries, work against this ideal. Go, Python, Java, and C# in contrast have a decent standard library, which helps minimize the explosion of transitive dependencies.
Minimal standard libraries force growing companies to build out their own internal collection of "standard libraries". As one example, Bloomberg did this with C++. And I've heard of companies doing this already with Rust. This allows larger companies to manage and minimize the explosion of transitive dependencies over time.
All growing companies likely do something like this eventually. But again, smaller standard libraries incentivize companies to build this internal standard library earlier on. And the community benefits relatively little from these internal standard libraries. The community would benefit more if large organizations contributed back to an actual standard library.
