The term ordering is essential for data structures such as maps, sets, ordsets, orddict, and others. Dynamic languages have heterogeneous collections, which means you can have keys, lists, and sets with distinct data types. Some of these data structures are more efficiently implemented by having a total order. If Erlang/Elixir only allowed you to compare the same data types, those data structures would have to define their “total” ordering, and it would ultimately be inefficient, especially for composite data types (e.g. storing structs inside sets, such as a set of dates).
The main source of confusion is because Elixir comparison operators are structural, not semantic. But there are good reasons for those as well. The docs go in detail over this: Kernel — Elixir v1.17.0-dev
The mutability of module attributes shouldn’t be a concern, really. Defining modules in Elixir is mutable a whole. defmodule, def, attrs are all mutable operations that define a module, functions, etc as you execute them. This what allows you, for example, to programmatically define a function. But, as meta-programming, those abilities are only really there at compile-time by design.
