I interpret this as replacing a strange but more optimal call to the runtime with a straight forward but less fast stdlib implementation. rsc's comment seems more like a todo note than and ideological stance (to me at least). Something like: "I removed this weird fast way to do this that was breaking stuff b/c of linker things and replaced it with some straightforward code that's slower. If we want this to be more optimal in the future we can fix it at the compiler level.". But I'm just reading into it. Someone should ask him and tell him to explain himself :) It's been 8 years. What have you been doing?
I interpret this as replacing a strange but more optimal call to the runtime with a straight forward but less fast stdlib implementation. rsc's comment seems more like a todo note than and ideological stance (to me at least). Something like: "I removed this weird fast way to do this that was breaking stuff b/c of linker things and replaced it with some straightforward code that's slower. If we want this to be more optimal in the future we can fix it at the compiler level.". But I'm just reading into it. Someone should ask him and tell him to explain himself :) It's been 8 years. What have you been doing?