I'm finding Phoenix discourages Starter Apps - any reasons why it is designed like this?

[AstonJ]

@cvkmohan

I am not speaking about need of global state. I am just speaking about naming conventions. For example, instead of my_app and my_app_web - what would be the harm if we use app and web folders inside my_app - that will make the namespacing a lot more simpler. There must be reasons. I am curious to know them.

Have a look at the 1.3 release thread for the reasoning:

@chrismccord

Directory Changes

The “web” directory has been moved from lib/my_app/web, to lib/my_app_web. This change makes a clearer separation between your greater Elixir application and the web interface to it. The new convention also aligns more closely to the umbrella application structure, so it will be a more natural step to go from a single application to an umbrella application in the future. For example, the new structure produced by mix phx.new looks as follows:

lib
├── my_app
│   ├── application.ex
│   └── repo.ex
├── my_app.ex
└── my_app_web
|   ├── channels
|   ├── controllers
|   ├── endpoint.ex
|   ├── gettext.ex
|   ├── router.ex
|   ├── templates
|   ├── views
└── my_app_web.ex

Web alias changes

The MyApp.Web alias has been renamed to MyAppWeb. This removes a special-case naming convention we had that went against common Elixir conventions when it comes to naming umbrella applications. With this change, we now have parity with Elixir naming, with the added bonus that a unique namespace further signals the separation of your greater Elixir application and business logic from your Phoenix web tier.