From an OO perspective I can completely agree with this and the encode/decode pattern the author is suggesting seems to be the right way to deal with this probl

From an OO perspective I can completely agree with this and the encode/decode pattern the author is suggesting seems to be the right way to deal with this problem as it will also hopefully translate in having an esperanto data type which can be used for all sorts of APIs and formats. But from a functional perspective I would disagree. The code example wouldn't even make sense in that world. You would query it as is and compare it with other data or create new structures as with any other data you handle in your language.