This is a problem for non-dispatch or singular dispatch languages, it's significantly different in the context of multiple dispatch. Namespaces are, well, not bad, but sometimes they are a solution to a problem that does not necessarily exist.
Is it really that different? It's fine in languages with multiple dispatch to have its builtin functions in the default namespace, but that doesn't mean that we'd want functions for everything in the default namespace. Namespacing is still useful.
For one thing, I've found it very useful when folks use syntax like `import numpy as np`, because then when I see `np.foo` I can trace back where `foo` comes from and look up the relevant documentation.
The complaint about `open("foo.txt").readlines()` vs `readlines("foo.txt")` is a red herring IMO, because nothing stops anyone from implementing a generic `readlines()` function in Python that can take a string file name or a file handler object. It's just that nobody really cares enough to because it's a complete non-issue.
But Julia _does_ have namespaces, and you can import everything with the `import` statement, or you can retrieve only the functions you need. This is also what is generally done during package development, while dumping everything is for interactive use.
