[jasode]

If there are no modules but a "flat" global namespace which requires every function name to be unique to avoid collisions... it means people would inevitably re-invent pseudo/fake "modules" and hierarchy in metadata tags in large non-trivial codebases.

Consider a function name: log()

Is it a function to log an event for audit history?

Or is it a function to get the mathematical natural logarithm of a number?

The global namespace forces the functions to be named differently (maybe use underscore '_') in "audit_log()" and the other "math_log()". With modules, the names would isolated be colons "::" or a period '.' : Audit.log() and Math.log(). Audit and Math are isolated namespaces. You still have potential global namespace collisions but it happens at the higher level of module names instead of the leaf function names. Coordinating the naming at the level of modules to avoid conflicts is much less frequent and more manageable.

Same issue in os file systems with proposing no folders/directories and only a flat global namespace with metadata tags. The filenames themselves would have embedded substrings with underscores to recreate fake folder names. People would reinvent hierarchy in tag names with concatenated substrings like "tag:docs_taxes_archive" to recreate pseudo folders/directories of "/docs/taxes/archive". Yes, some users could deliberately avoid hiearchies and only name tags as 1-level such as "docs", "taxes", "archive" ... but that creates new organizational problems because some have "work docs" vs "personal docs" ... which gravitates towards a hierarchical organization again.

[john2x]

This is what Emacs Lisp has, and what indeed does happen with libraries

[_Wintermute]

Happens with R as well where everything gets dumped into a global namespace. It's a huge mess.

If you're lucky all functions will have a common prefix str_* or fct_*. If you're unlucky then you have to figure out which package has clobbered a standard library function, or the exact ordering of your package import statements you need for your code to run.

[bfung]

Same with S3 object names.

There’s no directories in S3, just object names.

The feature of the object names being hierarchical with “/“ delimiters are out of habit and easier to reason about for the avg user.

[skydhash]

Same thing happens to me with Bear.app (note taking). It only has tags, and the first thing I believe everyone does is to go with hierarchical structure again, because you need some tag, but also an additional specifier. Which help with grouping an location (And Bear.app have support for that naming scheme and displays it as a tree).