Self-similar: a versatile folder pattern for code

“The word 'isomorphism' applies when two complex structures can be mapped onto each other, in such a way that to each part of one structure there is a corresponding part in the other structure, where "corresponding" means that the two part play similar roles in their respective structures.”

– Douglas HOFSTADTER

Gödel, Escher, Bach • Meaning and Form in Mathematics • pp. 57

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I've seen various trends come and go in code folder and file structure.

The two big ones in the front-end space seem to have been:

• Function-focussed.
  • 📁 controllers
  • 📁 views
  • 📁 models
  • etc...
• Feature-focussed.
  • 📁 posts
  • 📁 comments
  • 📁 likes
  • etc...

There have been various efforts to combine them, such as the feature-sliced design.

For example, we can have:

• 📁 posts
  • 📁 controllers
  • 📄 list.ts
  • 📄 detail.ts
  • 📄 create.ts
  • 📄 delete.ts
  • 📁 views
  • 📄 list.tsx
  • 📄 detail.tsx
  • 📄 create.tsx
  • 📄 deleted-message.tsx
  • 📁 models
  • 📄 post.ts
• 📁 comments
  • 📁 controllers
  • ...
  • 📁 views
  • ...
  • 📁 models
  • ...
• 📁 likes
  • ...

Overall I like the above strategy. But I wanted to take it one step further.

You see... sometimes I feel I want to have the best of both worlds. A bit of functional and a bit of feature.

• Some kinds of things seem to fit neatly into a single feature.
  • 📁 posts
  • 📁 comments
  • 📁 likes
• Other kinds of things seem to make more sense as functional pieces.
  • 📁 hooks
  • 📁 utils
  • 📁 mixins

What I've settled on is: consistency in naming with freedom in ordering.

Rules

Here are the rules of the self-similar folder pattern:

1. Any word can be pluralized: comment => comments.
2. Any word can be combined with any other word (or combination of words) by a dash: delete, comment => delete-comment.
3. Any word (or combination of words) can be used to name a folder or file, at any nesting level.

Process

First we start with listing all of the unique "naming words" or tokens in our present file/folder structure (non-pluralized):

border	comment	controller	create
delete	deleted	detail	fetch
get	hook	like	list
local	mixin	model	post
recessed	relieved	storage	use
util	view

Then we group similar words, based on how they seem to be used in the system and how they seem to naturally fit together. (Note that words can be re-used as many times as needed.)

Aside: This technique has long been known in UX design as card sorting.

• border, recessed, mixin
• comment, list, create, delete
• post, detail, list, create, delete
• like, list, create, delete
• etc...

It becomes clear that certain functions cluster around a single feature. For example, post has detail, list, create and delete. For these cases, we adopt feature grouping.

It becomes similarly clear that certain functions stand alone or group with other similar functions. For example, border variants recessed and relieved are each a kind of mixin, which I consider a function not a feature. For these cases, we adopt function grouping.

Based on the groupings, we order the words by priority:

And then nest them in order.

The end-result:

• 📁 posts
  • 📁 controllers
  • 📄 list.ts
  • 📄 detail.ts
  • 📄 create.ts
  • 📄 delete.ts
  • 📁 views
  • 📄 list.tsx
  • 📄 detail.tsx
  • 📄 create.tsx
  • 📄 deleted-message.tsx
  • 📁 models
  • 📄 post.ts
  • 📁 hooks
  • 📄 like-post.ts
• 📁 comments
  • 📁 controllers
  • ...
  • 📁 views
  • ...
  • 📁 models
  • ...
• 📁 likes
  • ...
• 📁 hooks
  • 📁 local-storage
  • 📄 hook
• 📁 utils
  • 📁 fetch
  • 📄 get.ts
  • 📄 delete.ts
  • 📄 post.ts
• 📁 mixins
  • 📁 border
  • 📄 recessed.ts
  • 📄 relieved.ts

Notice that this folder structure exhibits a kind of self-similarity.

For example:

• detail can appear within either controllers (as a controller) or views (as a view).
• controllers, views and models can appear within features posts, comments and likes.
• hooks can be grouped together with other hooks, such as local-storage/hook.ts, but alternatively, they can be grouped with a feature, such as posts/hooks/like.ts.

This self-similarity makes the folder structure extremely powerful yet flexible. Any word can be a unit of re-use, but no word is "locked in" to only appearing in one part of the structure. The form is extremely flexible, yet also extremely rigorous.

When to use

It requires effort and teamwork to keep this kind of folder structure well organised. Card sorting is a high-energy, collaborative activity. So this folder structure is probably not a good fit for all scenarios.

If you are a team of, say, Ruby engineers, in a medium-sized corporation, who want to play it safe and follow an established pattern, there's nothing wrong with going function-based. The enemy here is risk of losing control.

If you are a startup, who need to move fast, and don't have time for any hand-wavy card-sorting UX nonsense, there's nothing wrong with going feature-based. The enemy here is time.

Where I see the sweet-spot for this kind of structure is a long-term cleanup operation in a fairly complex project but a small team of very experienced polyglot programmers. Lots of collaboration, lots of care, but also lots of autonomy. The enemy here is complexity of the code itself, and a technique that accepts complexity without succumbing to it is probably the right tool for the job.