From a collaboration point of view, the thought of programming with single-function modules sounds like a nightmare. Now you don't have to find and install matching versions of five libraries, you have to find suitable versions of a hundred functions.
Perhaps nice people step in to stop the suffering and provide packages of function versions which are mutually compatible and which are usually used together -- but that's modules again.
Perhaps nice people step in to stop the suffering and provide packages of function versions which are mutually compatible and which are usually used together -- but that's modules again
Not exactly. You've sort of moved the large globs of stuff from the back-end to the front-end, where the grouping is more useful.
I'm reminded of difficulties, like the kind faced when purchasing 1.5" electrical tape. That stuff's mostly used only by pro electricians, so you won't find it retail, and it's even hard to find a particular brand from a contractor's supply outfit, and when you do, you have to buy it in big lots, like a whole box of 10 rolls. What if you just want to fix a drum and you need a particular make of tape made by Scotch and you only want one roll? Out of luck.
So say you need a particular function. You end up importing this entire module, which has dependencies that also are defined in large-granularity terms (other modules) that have their own dependencies. So to use one function, you get saddled with a whole heap of dependency overhead. You're really paying the price for "a whole box" where what you really need is just one particular thing.
But if everything was stored in easily accessible public repositories at the granularity of individual functions, this wouldn't be the case. You'd be able to pull the particular version of the function you need, and it would just pull the particular versions of the functions it depends on, and so on.
Things would be a whole lot more memory efficient. Another way to think of it: modules are a lot less modular than than they really should be.
So say you need a particular function. You end up importing this entire module, which has dependencies that also are defined in large-granularity terms (other modules) that have their own dependencies. So to use one function, you get saddled with a whole heap of dependency overhead.
Just playing the devil's advocate here: in this use case, why not just write the function yourself?
Because, if there was a way to quickly find and import the right function (with small-granularity dependencies), it would be much faster in a great many cases.
Perhaps nice people step in to stop the suffering and provide packages of function versions which are mutually compatible and which are usually used together -- but that's modules again.