I agree with your sentiment. I also agree with pgs sentiment that modules are a cognitive barrier when dealing with code... that doesn't mean it can do without one, but I think it needs to be thought through carefully...
I think it's in the ansi common lisp book- unfortunately, my copy became too dog eared (the paperback is unfortunately a bit flimsy) and I threw it out, otherwise I'd let you know for sure. I think he was complaining about the CL module system being to hard to understand...
"The kind of modularity provided by packages is actually a bit odd. We have modules not of objects, but of names. Every package that uses 'common-lisp' has access to the name 'cons', because 'common-lisp' includes a function with that name. But in consequence a variable called 'cons' would also be visible in every package that used 'common-lisp'. If packages are confusing, this is the main reason why; they're not based on objects, but on their names".
I like the interesting footnote, very relevant to this discussion:
> So perhaps packages will turn out to be a reasonable way of providing modularity. It is prima facie evidence on their side that they resemble the techniques that programmers naturally use in the absence of a formal module system.
