[erlang-questions] Why do we need modules at all?

BRANK

Joe Armstrong <>Tue May 24 10:06:19 CEST 2011Why do we need modules at all? This is a brain-dump-stream-of-consciousness-thing. I've been thinking about this for a while. I'm proposing a slightly different way of programming here The basic idea is - do away with modules - all functions have unique distinct names - all functions have (lots of) meta data - all functions go into a global (searchable) Key-value database - we need letrec - contribution to open source can be as simple as contributing a single function - there are no "open source projects" - only "the open source Key-Value database of all functions" - Content is peer reviewed These are discussed in no particular order below: Why does Erlang have modules? There's a good an bad side to modules: Good: Provides a unit of compilation, a unit of code distribution. unit of code replacement Bad: It's very difficult to decide which module to put an individual function in. Break encapsulatio…