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Humans might be able to understand hierarchy, and even apply it to physical objects in their possession sometimes, but looking at the filesystem of the average
by magduf 8y ago
Humans might be able to understand hierarchy, and even apply it to physical objects in their possession sometimes, but looking at the filesystem of the average computer user would eliminate any notions you have that average users can actually maintain their own filesystems, or have any desire to.
- PascLeRasc 8y agoThat's a sign that we need to fix file hierarchy then, not that users are wrong or stupid.
- slig 8y agoThey just don't care. Whatever they have now is fine for them. How are we going to fix that?
- TeMPOraL 8y agoJust go and do it instead of performing bullshit A/B tests and copying whatever lowest-common-denominator solution your competitors invented. Regular users don't have context for technology, they scoop up whatever companies offer on the market. If everyone gravitates towards the same crappy solutions, most users won't complain, because they can't or don't want to imagine how things could be made better.
- magduf 8y agoUsers are wrong, and more importantly, lazy. No non-geek users actually want to spend their time organizing all their files into a well-thought-out hierarchical directory structure. Even worse, now users have been trained that it's simply not necessary, because "I can just search for whatever I'm looking for".
- anisppp 8y agoThe irony. Anybody with basic knowledge of CS (ie a geek user) should grok that there is no such thing as a “well-thought” hierarchy. This is the very reason relational databases exist. And for desktop and phone purposes, search is popular because it works damn well.
- magduf 8y ago>And for desktop and phone purposes, search is popular because it works damn well. It works well, until it doesn't. It's especially bad if you don't remember exactly what you're looking for; this is when a decent hierarchy is really useful. And yes, hierarchies have problems, which is why RDBMSs took over from the older hierarchical DBs which were used before that (such as on the Apollo program), but just throwing everything into a single directory and hoping file metadata and search will replace it all is wishful thinking.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 8y ago> It works well, until it doesn't. In particular, search tend to be buggy, and if you have no reference hierarchy that you know shows you unfiltered results, you have no basis to trust that the results of your search query are accurate. This is no 1. reason I rarely ever use search on Android or Windows. I don't trust it.
- leetcrew 8y agothis reminds me of the time that I helped my dad migrate his data to a new imac. with somewhat low expectations, I asked him if he knew where all his important documents were on disk. to my surprise he said confidently "sure I do!". he then opened the "All My Files" link in finder. I guess in a certain sense he wasn't wrong, but I still had to spend hours disentangling the files he actually wanted from thousands of random temp files and downloads. I made him get an external drive to clone the old drive anyway, and every so often I would have to help him find something that we had missed in the first pass. I remember wondering at the time: do windows and mac not do enough to help users organize their files, or are the cute little My Documents and Pictures folders that obscure the underlying filesystem already too much?
- tomatotomato37 8y agoA big part of that is the fact programs tend to spew their files haphazardly through Program Files/Program Data/Appdata/Documents/etc. I would be confused too with a physical hierarchical system if I had a robot that would randomly put the fruit in the closet shoeboxes next to a pile of batteries and toothpaste.