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

[Joe Armstrong]

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 10:02 PM, Vlad Dumitrescu <vladdu55@REDACTED>wrote:

> One thought: modules as grouping of functions and as a unit of loading are
> a way to ensure that a set of functions are consistent with each other,
> relative to some data the they can work on. This is important. Whatever
> replaces them should still fullfill that requirement.
>
> regards,
> Vlad
>
>

Absolutly. I'm working on the idea of flows.

A flow is a list of flows or grains

A grain is an atomic thing

A module is basically a flow where the grains are functions.

A novel is a flow of " chapter flows" a "chapter flow" is a flow
of paragraph grains etc.

An image gallery is a flow of image grains.

Everything is a flow or a grain.

I'm wriiting a folding editor in javascript to support editing/organising
flows

I made a weak minded attempt at this
see
https://github.com/joearms/elib1/tree/master/unsupported/folding

In this directory are some rudimentary folding editors
test_js6.html and experiment.erl are fun.

(( If anybody reading this is an ace javascript hacker and wants to help
please mail me -- I know *exactly* what help I need))

My first goal is to segement modules into flows and
put them into a web based flow editor.

All the flows will be in a global database.

One thing I missed saying - associated with each function is
*research* (NOT documentation) I want to store all reserach notes
necessary to write the function along with the function in a hidden fold
this should contain text, PDFs images etc. - the lot.

Often the research to write 100 lines of codes takes weeks
and we throw all this away - this must be stored
with the code (NOT linked, store a copy, the link might be
dead years later)

/Joe
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