Ask HN: Module Oriented Programming

What if there was a programming paradigm that evolved around modules rather than classes? In such a hypothetical paradigm, I would envision the following:

* Classes do not exist; Code is organised into modules. * Modules have private fields, functions and parameters. * There is no concept of inheritance; You build up a module using composition. For example: Module "Warp-Drive" Has-A sub-module "Fuel Chamber". * Modules interact with each other via message passing. * There is no concept of abstract modules, instantiating modules, etc. Each module exists as a concrete entity which can contain sub-modules and can be contained within other modules. * There is no concept of Static fields; If you want to have a "Static" like data member, you would create a separate module with that data which passes this information to whichever modules are interested in consuming it.

What is your opinion on such a system? This musing was brought about my personal frustration in learning OOP and wrapping my mind around some of the more abstract concepts. What if things could be simpler, as indicated above?

The closest I found regarding this topic is this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_programming