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Elm Europe 2017 - Evan Czaplicki - The life of a file

Elm Europe · 71.8K views · 2017-08-24 · 47:02

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Overview

Elm creator Evan Czaplicki's talk on how a file grows and when to split code up. He argues for keeping code in one file until it hurts and warns against premature extraction.

On Hacker News

Recommended as the argument for code colocation and delaying abstraction.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2019–2025

Topics

Software architecture & designFunctional programmingSoftware practice, open source & careers
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elmcode structurepremature abstractioncolocationevan czaplicki

What people said

gabigrin · 2024-02 · Strong recommendation

Great read, as always! The combination of the Elm reference and "coarsely structure codebases around CPU timelines and dataflow" statement reminded me of this great talk by Evan Czaplicki (Elm creator): [VIDEO]

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yakshaving_jgt · 2022-02 · Strong recommendation

Just stick everything in the same file until it actually hurts. This presentation[0] gets it right. [0]: [VIDEO]

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myaccountonhn · 2025-12 · Recommendation

There are a lot of lectures/speeches by the creator of elm and Richard Feldman that talk about how to think "functionally" Here is one about how to structure a project (roughly) [VIDEO] I also think looking at the source code for elm and its website, as well as the elm real world example help a lot.

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Sources

Video by Elm Europe, played through YouTube.

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