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

[Richard O'Keefe]

On 24/05/2011, at 8:49 PM, Gordon Guthrie wrote:

> ...and also...
> 
> following on from what Dimitri said while I was writing me e-mail, we
> hang unit test onto modules and design them at that level of
> abstraction
> 

Right now that is clear a Really Good Thing to do.

The question is whether it has to be that way, or whether it is
possible to devise something better.

 Do the unit of documentation
and the unit of testing
and the unit of loading
*have* to be the same thing?

How would a revised system *work* in a distributed world?

Back in the early days of the language Pop, the people at
the Edinburgh AI department had a game.  The whole machine
they were using was programmed in Pop, on top of bare metal.
The game goes like this:
    how much of the system can you zap before you have
    to reboot the machine?

How much of a shared sea-of-functions can you update before
having to revert to backups?