When we're talking about the balance between generic and explicit, we'd better talk about variable names. A good variable name will also strike this balance and become an emulsifier between the minion and the state tree.
Salt allows hierarchical data structures to be used in order to define variables. In a way, this allows variables to behave like directories, in which these structures may be either shallow or deep.
However, unlike directory structures, searching through deep variable structures is not necessarily as painful. When you use flat files to define a structure, it may actually be easier to read a structure that is deeply nested. Let's turn the ingredients for a chocolate chip cookie recipe into a set of Salt grains, as follows:
cookies:
fats:
- butter
sugars:
- granulated sugar
- light brown sugar
wet_ingredients:
- eggs
- vanilla extract
dry_ingredients:
...