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

Elm Europe4 HN recommenders · 2019–2025
72K views · talk · evergreen · Uploaded 2017-08-24

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.

Recommended as the argument for code colocation and delaying abstraction.

Software architecture & designFunctional programmingSoftware practice, open source & careers

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4 comments from Hacker News

@hombre_fatal2019 · in “38% of bugs at Airbnb could have been prevented by using types”

Premature extraction can solidify premature abstractions and create pressure against reabstraction. The creator of Elm has a talk that mentions this: [VIDEO]

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@yakshaving_jgt2022 · in “Code colocation is king”

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

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@gabigrin2024 · in “Clean your codebase with basic information theory”

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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@myaccountonhn2025 · in “Thoughts on Go vs. Rust vs. Zig”

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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