Comment by klibertp
4 years ago
I don't see a difference between switching between files and switching between positions in a file which is longer than a page or two. In both cases the switching is not free - unless you do something about it (like spliting panes/windows in your editor; bonus: it works for both separate files and long files in the same way!). It's also trivial (well... depending on the IDE/editor I guess) to make it open all 3 files when any one of them is opened and/or to make a command to cycle between files, similarly to how you can switch between .c and .h files in most environments.
For files where the logic, structure, and styling fits on a single page - yeah, splitting it into separate files doesn't make much sense.
> At worst you make working within the system a real pain.
That's what I don't understand - what pain? That it's better not to work with it using nano or notepad? It simply looks like a pain I would never experience, and I'm wondering if I'm right.
> I don't see a difference between switching between files and switching between positions in a file which is longer than a page or two.
Exactly! By putting everything into one file, you give the reader the option of splitting their view if they want, or looking at the file all in one pane; with multiple files, you have to have each file open independently. Editors give pretty nice ways of navigating to specific functions/methods/points within a file these days, so traversing a large file is not really an issue IME.
Personally, I don't understand the fascination with splitting everything into super small files; given the large number of files I generally have open in my editor, I'd rather look at one file with 1k lines of code than 3 files with 100-500 each. With separate files, if I'm trying to debug something that touches three different components, I need to have 9 files open instead of just 3.
This really depends heavily on how you use your editor, on its specific features. For example, you qualify the "navigating to specific definition" with "within the file", but in my editor jumping to definition across multiple files works exactly the same way as within a single file, and due to a stack of jumps that you can pop, there is usually no need to know or care in which file you are currently, or were previously. Similarly, you mention "large number of files you have open in your editor" as if that was a problem of any kind. For me, it isn't - I have 60+ files open frequently, but I have quite a few ways of searching for/jumping to a specific file, buffer, or content that I want to see, and I never need to cycle through open files or tabs. Most of the time I don't have to care if the file is open - there's literaly no difference in the method(s) of getting to a file because of its state (open or not).
The differences between my and your environments mean that our preferred workflows differ, too, because what can be problematic for you can be easy for me, and vice versa.
That being said, I also don't advocate "splitting everything into super small files". Splitting a file that is less than a "page or two" (I see 61 lines of code on one page, so less than 120 loc) is a mistake and should be done only in special circumstances, while files that grew larger than 500 loc should be refactored if it makes sense. Files over 1k loc have to be split. That's the policy we use at work, and I think it results in a pretty nice and easy to navigate code bases.
Back to the editors, though: as long as the codebase uses a convention - any convention - consistently, you can make it nice to work with, by altering your environment to match the convention. This is where the more configurable and easier to script editors win big time - if there's something in the codebase you don't like, and can't change, you can script it out of sight and out of mind easily. Coming from such an editor, I personally don't have a strong opinion on how the codebase should be structured (which includes the lenghts of files) - I do have some preferences, but I'm not very attached to them. That's just to signal that I'm not the one of people "fascinated" with splitting files for the sake of it :)
> For example, you qualify the "navigating to specific definition" with "within the file", but in my editor jumping to definition across multiple files works exactly the same way as within a single file
If your convention involves using the same name throughout different files (e.g. every component has a `styles` object), this becomes cumbersome to do. (Arguably, that's a problem with the convention, but sometimes you don't have control over this...)
Other than that, I mostly agree with you and fully admit that it's a matter of preference and highly dependent on your workflow; I was just trying to point out that a single file is generally easier to navigate with an out-of-the-box experience in most editors. I also agree with your stance on when to split files, with a small caveat: even when splitting something into multiple files, I still tend to group them by their high-level function as opposed to by "type". In other words, I would rather split a helper component into its own file with its own styling in the same file, rather than split all of the styling into its own file. (Of course, sometimes you really do have 800 lines of styles, in which case they probably need to be in their own file regardless.)
> That being said, I also don't advocate "splitting everything into super small files".
That's great! :) I see this too often in frontend web development, though: people will go out of their way to keep their files as small as possible to an irrational degree—almost as if they are trying to ensure that you can view every file in its entirety without scrolling.
You are only imagining the case when you have already opened/identified all of the files you intend to work on.
Actual workflows diverge significantly from the above. It's a matter of cohesion. Yes, co-locating each of the files (and only these files) in a single "component" directory can help ease navigation and discovery, but most of the time it's just easier to keep everything as cohesive as possible.