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

Elm Europe · talk · Watch on YouTube

Software architecture & designFunctional programmingSoftware practice, open source & careers

What it is

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.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended as the argument for code colocation and delaying abstraction.

  • 4 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 2 strong recommendations
  • first 2019, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “Just stick everything in the same file until it actually hurts. This presentation[0] gets it right.”

    Argues for keeping everything in one file until it hurts.

    yakshaving_jgt, 2022-02 · Strong recommendation · in “Code colocation is king”

  2. “this great talk by Evan Czaplicki (Elm creator)”

    Great talk by Elm's creator on structuring codebases.

    gabigrin, 2024-02 · Strong recommendation · in “Clean your codebase with basic information theory”

  3. “The creator of Elm has a talk that mentions this”

    Elm creator talks about premature extraction and abstractions.

    hombre_fatal, 2019-02 · Recommendation · in “38% of bugs at Airbnb could have been prevented by using types”

  4. “Here is one about how to structure a project (roughly)”

    Talk on how to structure a project functionally.

    myaccountonhn, 2025-12 · Recommendation · in “Thoughts on Go vs. Rust vs. Zig”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: elm, code structure, premature abstraction, colocation, evan czaplicki

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