while i agree with you to some extent, i don't think including a very large set of sorting functions in the standard library is a good idea. especially for dynamic languages, a larger standard library means more disk usage and worse cache utilization. it's also typically relatively easy to use your own sort function: in performance-critical cases, the sort function is usually called directly, not via intermediate libraries (which might need to be patched to call the new sort function); also, sort functions are self-contained, i.e. typically don't require system dependencies.