Does a new or emerging programming language really need practical libraries? [closed]

Question

Using a factor or forth, Arc or whatever as an example (note: factor is a bad example because it has a large set of practical libraries). Lets say you are considering using a programming language. Does having a large set of practical libraries matter? If your language is well designed, then it would be easy to create a 'string' library or a 'date' library. Maybe even a web framework?

I mention this, because when a language emerges, it seems that someone brings up 'practical libraries'.

Answer 1

It definitely matters - nine times out of ten, I'm going to pick a language with good, well-supported libraries that help accomplish what I want to do.

This isn't to say I wouldn't enjoy writing my own libraries (quite the contrary), but for a production project where quick, accurate results are important, that wouldn't be a practical option by any stretch of the imagination.

Answer 2

Java and .Net have spoiled people with the abundance of classes in the framework or in additional high-quality libraries (quite often free and open source as well). Same goes for Ruby and Python. It'd be hard to adopt a new language without such a library, as your productivity will suffer teremndously by having to reimplement every single feature you need.

Unless it's a breakthrough language that introduces something radical like intentional programming (I tell the computer what I want it to do and it inferes the proper code to do it)... Why, you have one of those? :-)