People who find this stuff interesting should also check out Larry Hasting's talk "Stepping through CPython" from this years PyCon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGF3Qu4dUqk
This argument seems inline with the growth of job spec's for "Dev Ops + Developer" roles. As outlined in the first paragraph project managers perceive bug fixing and operational tasks as "what's slowing progress" when these tasks require the most intimate understanding of the codebase.
They aren't "so bad", you can't expect the standard library to meet the requirements of everyone. Most of what this library achieves can be done with urlparse, it just has some additional "nice to haves". Also, see the comments about not using a MultiDict as a good indicator of why this problem isn't solved in the stdlib.
Pleased to say this company has got back in touch with me. They've had a busy few months so radio silence was understandable. (I just wasn't aware of how busy they are!)
I'm based in Sheffield UK, I mostly use Python where possible but write Java/Haskell where it makes sense. I have some code up on http://www.davbo.org/trac if you're interested.
I've been in contact with a YC startup since Jan 18th trying to sort out an internship for this summer, however their incompetence has forced me to just give up with them. Hopefully you'll have better luck than me. I'm still looking for a UK internship but have decided local companies are easier to deal with than most startups.
Great article @paavohtl!