Good news, the “pods” layout won the project layout wars! 
The finalized structure discussed in the Module Unification RFC includes all of the nice things about “pods” and fixes many of the bizarre quirks.
Work is underway to bring that RFC home, and make it possible to use in apps. As that work progresses in the next few weeks/months, I’m sure you will hear/see more things about it. Once we ship all the basic pieces we will be working to update the guides to ensure that we are teaching the correct layouts.
tldr; Pods won, eat it haters 