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In computer science courses at University, assignments written in OO languages such as Java had file systems similar to this:
In writing some of my own projects, it seems like splitting up each class into a file is very trivial, especially when classes are very small. Are there other design patterns that circumvent having many files lots of small helper classes, or is this pretty much the only standard?
"One class per source file" is the general standard for C# and Java.
Version control software operates with files, and not with classes. If you have one class per file, then you'll be able to see at a glance down to an individual class where you have been making changes.
For your own project, this is more important than for academic assignments. Your own project will be long-lived, and the functionality of the classes will grow.
edit:
Just last week, I had to do maintenance on 3rd party C# code. It had a 2.5kloc source file with five (5) large classes inside, and one of them had a substantial nested class. I've split that source file into five separate ones. That was one one of the first things I've done during that maintenance session.
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Similar question. Which is better: many class definitions in the same file or every class definition in a separate file?
