I agree with the proposition that documentation for available libraries is extremely important. However--isn't there always a "however..." when someone starts b

I agree with the proposition that documentation for available libraries is extremely important. However--isn't there always a "however..." when someone starts by agreeing with the thesis?--anyways, however... Before I start saying "The most important," I think of a story allegedly about Winston Churchill. At a party, a dowager rebuked him for his inebriation: "Winston , you are disgracefully drunk!" He steadied himself and glared at her: "And you, Madam, are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober." My clumsy point being, you can write libraries for a good language. You can document them. If the documentation is missing, someone can and eventually will write it. And anyone can write documentation, just like anyone can write a library. No committees. No endless blog posts debating how the fourth paragraph's third word should be capitalized. But fundamental language features simply cannot be bolted on. Even if they fit with the language's philosophy and implementation, it is a tremendous investment to get a new feature added to a language. Some languages do not admit new features easily. Type erasure, anyone? Some cultures do not admit new features easily. Closures, anyone? Both are examples of places where Java couldn't or wouldn't add features cleanly. There is no such issue with documentation. Anyone can document something, and everyone should. You don't need to make it official, either. Blog about a feature or library, and thanks to Google your blog post becomes an ipso facto part of the library's documentation. For my money, the measure of a library's documentation is whether I can type the name of a library into Google and find the answer to my questions on the top half of the first page.