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    +1 for "should not support operations that shouldn't be performed" Commented May 26, 2011 at 8:59
  • I would like to point out that not everybody agrees that "finding the most minimal set of member functions such that all operations you might want to perform on the object can be implemented reasonably efficiently in terms of them" is or should be a goal. Libraries of many other OO languages do not even try to achieve this. A good argument can be made that operations that are exclusively or primarily associated with a single instance of a given class should be members of it, since for instance this allows the implementations ('who calls who?') to vary over time without affecting client code. Commented Aug 27, 2021 at 11:34
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    My experience has tended to be that standard library designers often think that having a minimal interface to classes is a great idea, since it saves them work, but that library USERS are often very frustrated by libraries designed this way. (Consider the endless people asking "why isn't there a std::string::contains method like other languages have?" for instance? Or std::set::contains?). Also, having lots of nonmember functions with common names can clutter the global namespaces and create unexpected collisions and strange behavior when used with templates. Commented Aug 27, 2021 at 11:44