Reconstructing architecture

SLOP8374 · Week 5

Structure is a worldview

Before you read any code, read where the code lives.

Directory layout records how a team divided the problem — and whether they ever agreed on the division.

A folder named utils, helpers, common, or misc means:

we did not know where to put this

One such folder is normal. A utils/ containing a third of the codebase is a diagnostic finding.

index.js, main.py, App.tsx, cmd/server/main.go.

Find the door, and the first three things it reaches for. That is the project’s actual shape, as opposed to its advertised one.

Backbone shipped with a directory convention — models, collections, views — that a generation of JavaScript projects copied.

Those projects are now datable by that layout, the way a building is datable by its floor plan. The convention outlived the framework.

Standard practice in one era is unrecognisable in the next:

Do not mistake an old pattern for a bad decision.

Draw the map they never drew.

Then ask whether the territory was ever really that shape.

Finding	Interpretation
Tests mirror source structure	Disciplined team
Tests in a separate `test/` tree	Older convention, or a separate author
No tests at all	Solo developer, or a prototype that escaped
Config in the root	Standard practice
Config scattered everywhere	Organic growth, no refactoring
An `.env.example` exists	Someone thought about onboarding

Parnas, D.L. (1972) ‘On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules’, Communications of the ACM 15(12), pp. 1053–1058.

Conway, M.E. (1968) ‘How Do Committees Invent?’, Datamation 14(5), pp. 28–31.

Diagram your dig site’s structure without reading any function bodies.

Name one structural decision, and what it tells you about the team.