First, there are namespaces, it's just that they are associated with files instead of particular data types. Secondly, the naming issue only tends to become an

First, there are namespaces, it's just that they are associated with files instead of particular data types. Secondly, the naming issue only tends to become an issue when you have many types which all have similar internal structure. It turns out that, in Haskell at least, you can avoid needing this often by simply factoring out the shared structure (!). If this is not reasonable then there are boilerplate-y ways to use typeclasses for proper overloading (which also respects namespaces better than this solution does). Frankly, I have run into only one circumstance where I wanted to throw my computer through a wall due to record inefficiencies... and it only came up while trying to hand translate an the XML specification for ClinicalTrials.gov. It turns out there was a much simpler way to tackle the problem anyway.