Syntax or library

[wtd]

See poll.

[rizzix]

Well I believe the language should be as mininalistic as possible. The library on the other hand should be powerful and well documented.

[md]

I like powerful libraries, so long as they are well documented. A powerful library combined with fairly simple and powerful syntax would be best.

[Cervantes]

Library, but the language should be flexible enough to incorporate the library nicely (such as +, <, <=> methods in Ruby look like operators), or flexible enough to not require an enormous library.

[Martin]

That's why I like C++

[wtd]

Well, I wasn't actually asking this as a "how would you do it in your ideal language" question, but rather as "faced with the choice in some existing language, are you more likely to use syntactic sugar, or the library?

[Martin]

Libraries still. I think it keeps things more organized.

[rizzix]

You know me. Library > syntax sugar.

[wtd]

Ok. Just wanted to rephrase, since we don't all have the luxury of designing the languages we use.

How does this mesh with syntactic sugar that simply calls library functions/procedures/methods/subroutines?

For instance, in Ruby, defining the "each" method, then using "for ... in ... end".