Harlan Grove wrote:
Undue skepticism about documented functionality
isn't wisdom, it's paranoia.

In my case, it is based on decades of experience with
being on the oppposite side -- the person responsible
for implementing and supporting some functionality.
I know the value of the flexibility of undocumented
behavior -- the ability to evolve behavior judiciously.
I also know the "cop-out" value of undocumented behavior
-- the freedom not to support such behavior when it is
unwise to do so. And I know the danger of documenting
"too well" -- the inflexibility that can cause because
people depend on the documented behavior.

Whether paranoia is warranted when using Microsoft
software with Microsoft documentation is debatable.

My comments have nothing to do with the endless
parochial debates that some people like to engage in.
In fact, my comments were honed by experience with
software in another industry.

Given the need for simulating sampling without
replacement, would there ever be hardware RNGs
without a library routine to produce samples without
replacement?

Sure! The hardware RNG I am familiar with does not.
Why should it? Why would you expect it of a hardware
RNG, if we don't see it with most software RNGs --
Excel, for example? ;-)

It is trivial to implement "sampling without
replacement" in almost any programming language, e.g.
VBA. So there really is no need to provide the
feature with any RNG implementation, be it hardware
or software.