2013.4.0.0 proposal

[Mark Lentczner]

Re dlist

The platform hasn't been aiming for "small and focused" for quite some
time. And last year I called for a significant expansion of the palatform,
and this was met with general enthusiasm. The original motto for the
platform: "batteries included" is still apt.

We want to the platform to provide, out-of-the-box, a broad selection of
packages for common computing needs, where these packages can be counted on
to be there, to be stable, and be a reasonable default choice - and hence
worth learning and keeping in your toolbox. Not every package has to be
"the only best way" to do some task - Python includes a default HTTP
server, but there are plenty of others out there, and good reasons to
choose them. We want packages to be the reasonable default to turn to, when
the choice doesn't warrant researching through alternative packages on
hackage, or soliciting opinions on IRC.

Of course, the transitive nature of packages in the platform means that
sometime we have things in there that don't quite live up to those goals.
primitive is in the platform because vector needs it... but it isn't quite
a common computing need.

Dlist probably wouldn't have made it in on it's own merits - but it isn't
bad, and certainly a reasonable way to do what it does if that is what you
need and just want to get on with whatever else your doing. (perhaps our
motto should be "less yak-shaving"!) Since the use of Dlist isn't exposed
in aeson's interface , it could go either way. But I think it would be
reasonable to include.

- Mark
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