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Files, directories and paths are such a fundamental concept, yet I am surprised how few computer users are actually familiar with them. To me it seems that most
by jcfrei 8y ago
Files, directories and paths are such a fundamental concept, yet I am surprised how few computer users are actually familiar with them. To me it seems that most computer classes at the high school level can be divided in two groups: One which is basically a class for typists, where you learn how to type fast and how to edit documents. And then another one which directly (and often exclusively) teaches coding.
However what's often missing is a class which teaches basic computing concepts. Files and directories are just some of them. The basic von Neumann architecture (a CPU changing ram), what a program is, how the internet protocol and the domain name system work, different parts of a URL, how a frame buffer determines what is shown on the screen, how colors are encoded with RGB values, etc. These are all very interesting concepts that could be taught at the high school level. There's a lot to be learned even without going into the technical details and I am confident that these students would then find (desktop) computers much more accessible. Smartphones and their touch interfaces have been a runaway success and I think this is in part because most people never got comfortable with traditional desktop computers (and their GUIs) due to decades of misguided computer classes.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- munk-a 8y agoBut files, directories and paths are just abstractions we use for convenience. There is no mechanical reasons computers should have a single inheritance structure for locating files except familiarity and files being what files are now isn't a necessity either, zip files have a whole collection of files inside of them. I think as time goes by we'll see which of the concepts of computing we grew up with end up being core to the usage of a computer and I'd be especially excited if we went in the direction of relational linkage of assets the computer has access to.
- DC-3 8y ago> But files, directories and paths are just abstractions we use for convenience Abstractions common to literally every home computer operating system from the last several decades.
- ForHackernews 8y agoAnd absent from (or at least heavily obfuscated on) the mobiles and tablets young students use as their primary computing devices.
- onion2k 8y agoExcept games consoles. And tablets. And phones. And quite a lot of online services..
- awild 8y agoPhones have files and directories and there are several apps targeting normal audiences.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dkonofalski 8y agoIn other words, "that's how we've always done it". Is the justification for continuing to do it that way when the very foundation of that is based on outdated abstractions? As mentioned, there's no tangible reason for using directories and files as organizations except that we're fitting modern paradigms into existing ones. We're retro-fitting them to a system that existed because of technical limitations that don't exist now, for some reason.
- aequitas 8y agoI often grumble at the lack of usability of the directory hierarchy. Even though I grew up with directories and the FHS. To often I know what file I want but have to navigate an entire filesystem. This is especially true for non native open source Linux tools on macOS. They don't use the native file browser (which is not without its faults either) and often force you to start from root instead of a logical place like your home. There is really no use to have all files and folders on your fs available for opening or saving in most apps. Often you just need the most recent modified file or only files of a certain type. And there are really not a lot of places it makes sense to save files to outside of your home folder and personal project layout.
- creeble 8y agoTed Nelson used to refer to it as "the tyranny of the file". But he didn't really offer an alternative (other than Xanadu). And a hierarchical system of storage is convenient for lots of people - once they understand what "hierarchy" means. I think understanding hierarchy is one of those epiphanies that a new computer user can sometimes have. Others simply don't seem to be able to grok it.
- rpeden 8y agoI've always found WinFS[1] to be a pretty interesting attempt at a relational filesystem. Although it was probably a bit too ambitious, which led to it being cancelled. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
- _trampeltier 8y agoConsumer PCs these days make it hard. There are so many (really terrible) tools on these Computers. Ex. last month I asked a friend (a very not computer guy), if he could give me some pictures from an event last summer. I gave him an USB drive. Next day he came and asked for help to copy the files. We saw the pictures in his Photo App. Of course it was NOT possible to copy the files from this App. I had no idea where they where on his PC. Even for me it was finally difficult just to copy some files on his new Win 10 PC.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoOh yeah, Apple is being very difficult with this app; stashing all photos in a not easily accessed folder structure, and basically pushing people to preferring sharing via icloud over just the files.
- Brometheus 8y agoYou can literally drag them from the Photos app to your usb drive, my dude…
- toxik 8y agoBut not into e.g. the terminal. Apple Photos is useful, but it absolutely mucked up the idea of pictures as files (it has to.)
- matthewmacleod 8y agoYou can drag images from Photos directly into the terminal and they will drop as a path to the image you dragged. If you drag a thumbnail, you get a path to the thumbnail; if you drag a full-resolution image, you get a path to that. That's pretty much how I would expect an app like this to work on a Mac!
- eiaoa 8y ago> You can drag images from Photos directly into the terminal and they will drop as a path to the image you dragged. If you drag a thumbnail, you get a path to the thumbnail; if you drag a full-resolution image, you get a path to that. Really? What if you want to copy a group of images? If what you describe is correct, when you drag and drop a group of images, wouldn't you get copies of the thumbnails. I'm pretty sure my GF did this. I asked her for full res copies of some images of us, and got resized low-res versions. She uses iPhoto said she just dragged them out of the app. I had to fuss around with it and finally got what I wanted by using an export feature. Dragging and dropping each full-resolution images one by one sounds like a nightmare. > That's pretty much how I would expect an app like this to work on a Mac! If this is what's now expected from Macs, oh how Apple has fallen. I can think of zero use cases where you'd actually want to drag and drop the thumbnail out, but not the full resolution image.
- WalterBright 8y agoI always wondered why "directories" were renamed to "folders". Now, in Win7, I bring up file explorer. Click on "Documents". It says at the top it is located in "Libraries -> Documents". But that isn't where it is. It's in c:\users\name\documents". I never understood why there are two separate file systems mapping to the same files. It's madness.
- rasz 8y agoNeither some people at Microsoft, as evidenced by recent 10 update delete fiasco.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoYeah that's a thing Microsoft did a few years ago, they wanted to change the locations and names for certain types of files, but instead of doing a move / copy, they created virtual folders like Documents and Pictures where you can add multiple folders to. It's confusing and I hope they'll offer to consolidate all that at some point. Which reminds me of iTunes, which I've used on Windows for years. It had an option to automatically consolidate files and store them in a sane location automatically when adding music. It was great.
- undersuit 8y agoThey are super special folders too. I like to have my Downloads on a separate hard drive because of my tiny SSD. You can't make symlink with those Quick access directories though, you break them. You have to go into the properties of the item and change their Location. Oh, and if you broke them it's not like Windows will fix them for you, no you need to head over to Super User and read some solutions.
- SiVal 8y agoI think "folder" is a more practical name than "directory". Group or fileset or collection, etc., would probably work, too. The problem with directory is that it is describing the implementation instead of the result. The result you're after as an ordinary user is a container holding a group of files, not a "directory" that lets you look up a filename and be told where to go find it. As an implementation, of course, the latter is closer to what a file system "directory" really does, but that's not the most useful metaphor to present to the ordinary user. And does a phone directory contain individual listings plus other phone directories? No, but that's what "directory" meant to most people back when the name was changed to "folder". And the name change happened when GUIs were first created and needed icons to represent a thing to drop files into. You don't drop files into directories, you drop them into folders or file drawers or something. (Of course, my father can't stop calling a folder a "file", because file folders were so often called "files" at the office way back when. Oh, well.) I've called them "directories" since before the Mac existed, so the word was long ago defined in my head by the thing itself and could be called a watermelon for all the difference it would make to me, but if I look at it with a beginner's mind, "directory" doesn't seem like a very good name.
- gwbas1c 8y agoIn general, only a minority of power users truly understand files and folders. Most other people organize information differently. A true "universal" application needs to flex its interface for people who understand files and folders, and those who don't. (Most applications don't need to be this flexible, though.)
- ams6110 8y agoFiles and folders make perfect sense to someone who worked in an office 20 years ago. The office would likely have been furnished with cabinets full of literal folders containing paper documents. I haven't used a file cabinet at work in over a decade. I still have a file drawer at my desk but there are no folders in it. So in that regard, familiarity with the concept is probably a lot lower than it used to be. What probably makes more sense to users today would be tagging or labeling documents into categories. Could still be implemented as files, folders, and links, but the presentation might make more sense using other analogues.
- baselined 8y agoWorking in a school, not as a teacher, it is amazing to see how students litter their desktop with files, similar to how most of the staff save their files. I am not a programmer by any means and I know how important it is to create a filing system with directories. It is irritating how much time is lost while waiting for colleagues to locate a file hidden among the many on their desktop.
- gglitch 8y agoI bet you'll love this: https://johnnydecimal.com/ https://johnnydecimal.com/ Edit: Sorry, I should have saved you the bother of clicking. It's a digital file management strategy loosely inspired (I assume) by library classification systems like Dewey's. I don't use it myself, but I admire the simplicity, clarity, and flexibility of the system.
- ryandrake 8y agoJust a little nit: files, directories and paths are popular concepts today due to the prevalence of hierarchical filesystems, but not necessarily fundamental to computing. You can have a computer without any of those things, just not one that looks like today’s computers. My home computer in the 80s had only one of those(files) and even that concept was optional because storage was optional.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]