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Is it a problem that students don't know abstraction layers lower than they regularly use, or that we're collectively climbing up the abstraction ladder as the
by ken 7y ago
Is it a problem that students don't know abstraction layers lower than they regularly use, or that we're collectively climbing up the abstraction ladder as the years go by? I'm a full generation older than these students, and most of my colleagues can't read or write assembly language. I've worked with programmers who have never even written a compiler, database, or central processor.
I'd say we're seeing that filesystems weren't a great user experience, at least the way they've been implemented in the past, and I'd place the blame on the other side. The design of computer systems today isn't the only possible way to design them. They exist to serve users. If our old systems aren't well-liked by users, and we spend all our efforts hiding their inherent design so people can actually use them, maybe our foundation is wrong.
Even the most technical people in the world have been trying to replace our filesystems with object databases for a few decades now, and plenty of people use only "services" (database in the cloud) or "apps" (database on phone). Isn't it possible filesystems have outlived their usefulness? For a lot of people, they really only exist to boot the OS.
Computer science students need to learn about filesystems and C and Unix, sure, like cooks and carpenters need to learn US customary units.
- incompatible 7y agoWell, I've been using and programming computers for decades now, but I have to admit I've never "written a compiler, database, or central processor". This is quite a high bar for computer competency, I think. The comments about file systems are interesting, but I doubt that programming is going to get much easier just because you store your source code in database tables instead of files.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThere are good and bad abstractions, and the whole issue here is that filesystems are a good abstraction, both intellectually and ethically, and the "new" replacements are mutually incompatible lies that reduce your ability to accomplish what your goals with your device and simultaneously try to take ownership of the data and the device away from you.