I've had thoughts along this line for a while. I think Scala does better than this article gives credit for; case classes are a significant step in the right direction, particularly post-Scala 3 (or with Shapeless in Scala 2) where you have many tools available to treat them as records, and you can distinguish practically between case classes (values) and objects with identity even if in theory they're only syntax sugar. It also offers an Erlang-style actor system if you want one.

In my dream language I'd push this further; case classes should not offer any object identity APIs (essentially the whole of java.lang.Object) and not be allowed to contain non-value classes or mutable fields, and maybe objects should be a bit more decoupled from their state. But for now I wouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good.

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arethuza 4 days ago | parent [-]

"objects should be a bit more decoupled from their state"

Do you mean allowing the "class" of an object to be changed - CLOS can do that. Mind you it's a long time since I wrote any code using CLOS and even then I'm pretty sure I never used change-class.

	▲	lmm 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		The thing I'm envisioning is something akin to typeclass instances / trait impls, but specialised to the case where you have a service with identity rather than being for general function implementation. Just making the bridge between the "bag of state" piece and the "interface implementation accessible via a name/reference" piece a bit more of a first-class citizen.