[fay59]

I feel that it’s so simple that many people will overlook that it even exists. In languages that have both, it’s hard for functions to compete with operators. I don’t think that this is the best design to promote correctness.

[GuB-42]

Maybe, but providing simple functions for "obvious" operations, to promote correctness, make it easier for the compiler, or just for convenience is not uncommon at all. Most languages have a min/max function somewhere, sometimes built-in, sometimes in the standard library, even though it is trivial to implement. C is a notable exception, and it is a problem because, you have a lot of ad-hoc solutions, all with their own issues.

If you look at GLSL, it has many function that do obvious things, like exp2(x) that does the same thing as pow(2,x), and I don't think anyone has any issue with that. It even has a specific "fma" operation (fma(a,b,c) = a*b+c, precisely), that solves a similar kind of problem as the overflowing average.