[tibbe]

There can be more than one problem, including having a small standard library.

[catnaroek]

The lack of a standard library can be fixed relatively easily: write libraries! OTOH, the existence of anti-modular language features that are extensively used in several major libraries, is a more serious problem, because:

(0) It means that libraries in general won't play nicely with each other, unless they're explicitly designed to do so.

(1) It can't be fixed without throwing away code.

[tibbe]

This whole thread is exactly about how "write libraries!" (if done outside the standard library) doesn't work (see my top post).

I do agree that lack of modularity features certainly doesn't help though.