One of the hallmarks of Codeigniter has been that its not dependent on any third party code. What happens when there is bug in the third party code? Its a big problem because unless the developer fixes it immediately the community will be forced to create a fork. Codeigniter is a great platform because its very stable. Releases of Codeigniter are in production for years. The reality is that most third party libraries are abandoned, OR they put their energy into the next version - with a bunch of breaking changes that will no longer be compatible with Codeigniter 4.
Otherwise I want to push back on some of the comments about Helpers. Helpers are completely optional. No one forces anyone to use Helpers. If they are an advanced coder they are not going to like the helpers or use them because they have their own helpers and ideas about how that kind of functionality should be accomplished. So people posting about which helpers they like or do not like is pointless. Its a big community, there are thousands and thousands of people using codeigniter, and they don't post on this bulletin board.
Helpers are for beginning and intermediate programers. They 'help' developers get an application or website built faster. They are not supposed to be teaching tools for how to code or to demonstrate the latest hotness. They are there to help with common tasks that many websites or applications will need. For someone to put forward a vision of Codeigniter 4 having less features because they personally do not like the code in a helper or they don't personally use it is just not relevant to the larger community of users. As long as a Helper is not a security risk, is optional, and does a job that is needed for web or application development - it should be included in the Codeigniter framework.
