> I never coded
> with clojure, but my argument for these helpers is that in code we do
> string manipulations all the time, they are trivial to write, so why not
> have trivial helpers.
The criticism would be exactly the same: if they're trivial, why have
them in the library at all.
For me the reason would be: to focus on actual code instead of silly tasks like computing indices and making code more verbose than necessary also while avoiding silly bugs.
> I usually don't care about these extra
> function calls, what matters more to me is how beautiful the code looks
> and how readable it is.
Often, I'd agree. But the tradeoffs when creating the standard library
of the language are somewhat different, IMHO.
Interesting point. I want to believe that we can have convenience without sacrificing performance, maybe by coding these in C? Just a thought, not an actual proposal.
> > From your side, I understand that your definition of the minimal set is
> > much thiner, and maybe what would help is to give the complete list of
> > the functions you find superfluous and why (list at
> >
https://github.com/magnars/s.el so far you mention `s-prepend` and
> > `s-append`). For example I'd disagree if you said `s-left` and `s-right`
> > are not useful to import because it can be done with `substring`.
>
>
> I will respectfully refuse this invitation: I have other work to do.
No worries. I think I now have enough information to propose something concrete.