After 47 years in this industry, I’ve learned one thing: file organization is a scam invented by IDE vendors.

The Problem with Multiple Files

You know what’s slow? Opening files. Every time you Cmd+P to find a file, that’s 0.3 seconds wasted. Do that 400 times a day and you’ve lost 2 entire minutes. That’s 10 minutes per week. 8.6 HOURS per year.

You could learn Kubernetes in that time. Not that you should—we’ll get to that.

The Solution: app.go

Here’s my production setup at a Fortune 500 company (can’t say which, NDA, but it rhymes with “Foogle”):

// app.go - 847,000 lines
package main

import (
    "everything"
)

func main() {
    // The entire application
}

Clean. Simple. No import cycles because there’s nothing to import.

But What About—

“Readability?” — Use Ctrl+F. It’s literally right there.

“Team collaboration?” — Git handles merge conflicts. That’s what it’s FOR.

“Testing?” — If your code works, why test it? I’ve never understood this obsession.

Real-World Results

After migrating our React/Node/GraphQL/MongoDB/Redis/Kafka/Elasticsearch stack to a single index.js, we saw:

  • 100% reduction in “file not found” errors
  • Build times dropped from 3 minutes to 47 minutes (more time for coffee)
  • Junior devs stopped asking “where does this go?”

Conclusion

SOLID principles tell you to separate concerns. But here’s what 47 years taught me: your code is one concern. It does stuff. Put it in one place.

As XKCD 1205 shows, time spent automating must be less than time saved. Time spent organizing files? Never saved anyone anything.

And remember what Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Boss said: “I don’t understand what you do, but I want it in one place so I can delete it easily.”

Next week: Why microservices are just distributed monoliths with extra latency.

Senior Principal Staff Architect at [REDACTED]. Views are mass-produced in a facility that also processes opinions.