&gt; following long function call chains is counter-productive<p>Well, be productive then!<p>It is a heuristic. I don&#x27;t think I am in the minority saying that &quot;breaking things down in small manageable chunks is a good thing&quot;. That&#x27;s is not just Erlang that&#x27;s common sense. That&#x27;s the point. That doesn&#x27;t mean having to count lines if you go over 7 start making functions like next1 next2 and so on. That&#x27;s called being pedantic.