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

[Vlad Dumitrescu]

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 16:15, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:

> The OTP release has 1793 modules and in these there are 56317 functions
> with different names.
> 11887 functions are defined in only one module, ie the for 11887 functions
> the name alone uniquely
> identifies the module. The distribution of functions over modules has a
> long tail with strange spikes,
> ie most function names are in very small number of modules. But some
> function names like handle_call
> etc and in a very large number of modules.
>
> Searching for a function using the function name as a key would only lead
> to a small number of candidate module if we exclude names like handle_call.
>
> it would be interesting to do this with type signatures ...
>

If I understand correctly, it would then be necessary to have a database
over all types, too. And a way to detect when types are identical, and a way
to search types based on some meta-data associated with them... It might
work, but it's a *lot* of work (pun intended) and I'm not sure how it would
mix with existing codebases.

More thinking required.

regards,
Vlad
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