Fun Boy Three Were Wrong: it is what you do, not the way that you do it

TL;DR

This paper revisits foundational ideas on modularity to understand their original problems and highlights their relevance to spreadsheets, aiming to help avoid common issues.

Contribution

It clarifies the original motivations behind modularity and applies these insights to spreadsheet problems, offering a new perspective.

Findings

Modularity addresses specific foundational problems.

Spreadsheet issues can be understood through modularity concepts.

Recognizing these problems can help prevent common errors.

Abstract

I revisit some classic publications on modularity, to show what problems its pioneers wanted to solve. These problems occur with spreadsheets too: to recognise them may help us avoid them.