Very true about folding, and org-babel is amazingly capable. It is great for things like examples, notes, short tutorials, etc. But, I have never been able to

Very true about folding, and org-babel is amazingly capable. It is great for things like examples, notes, short tutorials, etc. But, I have never been able to actually make use of the features in any kind of a more complicated setting: I find that too often you really need to have the code in standalone files, for example for batch jobs, running in other environments, sharing, etc. etc., and having code within the .org file really does not mix well with that. Perhaps your workflow somehow resolves that problem?