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

[Richard O'Keefe]

On 25/05/2011, at 3:34 PM, Edmond Begumisa wrote:

> Hello Joe,
> 
> I've personally wanted an easy way to load modules from different places.
> 
> If you started with making modules easy to load from different places, then later provide support for functions, I imagine this would be easier to implement immediately and easier for people to make use of immediately ... where "people" refers to me :)
> 
> I've got two suggestions (mostly inspired by the Mozilla Framework)...
> 
> 1. How about letting the programmer choose where the functions come from (kv store, fs, web-server, etc)...
> 
> For instance, a module could start...
> 
> -import(["file://misc/collect_int", "http://erlang.org/lists/*", "mnesia://db1/misc/merge_kv"]).

Why does this have to be done inside the module?
Why cannot the mapping from module names to sources
be *outside*, like an SGML (or XML) catalogue,
or a .lace file?