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What about the "helpers" found in the standard library? How do you feel about those things?

Do you have an example you’re thinking of? I don’t think standard libraries automatically have good architecture (see: PHP), but they do have a big influence on culture, which is interesting.

No, I meant if you think helpers are anti-pattern that results into a spaghetti code, then you must also think that standard libraries are an anti-pattern mess. I don't think there's a standard library that doesn't have helpers, unless we don't agree on what a helper is?

Hmm that could be it. Like, Python has json and it works like pickle before it. I don’t think that’s a helper and I like that it reinforces that serialization pattern.

What I think of as helpers are like base64_auth_to_username_password. That’s factoring out like 2-3 lines of code that may be duplicated in a half dozen places, but in truth represents an incomplete abstraction, layer, or subsystem.

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