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> It seems that at some point, all the major OS makers agreed that users are too stupid to understand a file hierarchy, and came up with tricks to hide it. And

> It seems that at some point, all the major OS makers agreed that users are too stupid to understand a file hierarchy, and came up with tricks to hide it. And this is why I find myself mostly in the text shell. Were I to go graphical the minimum I want is a simple address bar that I can override the current path with a specified path at will. Maybe a tree view like in Windows 95 Explorer just to pretty things up. Some of the modern comforts like thumbnail images would also be welcome. I wish they would stop insulting their users who have taken the time to understand the underlying technicalities of a file system. All this should be user-configurable in a good file manager. SpaceFM and PcmanFM come closest to what I've specified.

groby_b 6y ago
Hm. Cater to the 1% who have shown that they're able to learn complex concepts easily, or support the 99% who would rather not think about internals and use a computer as a simple tool. That's not a difficult question. The only time it makes sense to expose the internals is if you build a specialist tool for people who like internals exposed. This means that no, it shouldn't be "user configurable" either. You don't want a combinatorial explosion of states in your UI for a tiny set of users in the general purpose case, and you don't want to create a honking fat tool for specialists who'll only use the specialist path. The computer industry is discovering what the mechanical tools industry has known for a while: You can build a general purpose tool that's simple & straightforward, or you can make a specialist tool. Pretty much any specialist will be slightly unhappy with the specialist tool and modify it to their own requirements, but you can't build a specialist tool that makes even close to all specialists happy. The specialists will also continue to use the generalist tool if it gets the job done, but they'll complain every step of the way.
- wtetzner 6y ago
  Being able to see the path in Finder doesn't seem like something that only 1% of users would want, though. I've seen "normal people" get very frustrated because they couldn't figure out where they saved a file. They saved it in a folder called "Documents", but they then tried to find it in a different folder also called "Documents". Hardly seems problematic to show the path to the folder.

groby_b 6y ago

Hm. Cater to the 1% who have shown that they're able to learn complex concepts easily, or support the 99% who would rather not think about internals and use a computer as a simple tool. That's not a difficult question. The only time it makes sense to expose the internals is if you build a specialist tool for people who like internals exposed. This means that no, it shouldn't be "user configurable" either. You don't want a combinatorial explosion of states in your UI for a tiny set of users in the general purpose case, and you don't want to create a honking fat tool for specialists who'll only use the specialist path. The computer industry is discovering what the mechanical tools industry has known for a while: You can build a general purpose tool that's simple & straightforward, or you can make a specialist tool. Pretty much any specialist will be slightly unhappy with the specialist tool and modify it to their own requirements, but you can't build a specialist tool that makes even close to all specialists happy. The specialists will also continue to use the generalist tool if it gets the job done, but they'll complain every step of the way.

wtetzner 6y ago
Being able to see the path in Finder doesn't seem like something that only 1% of users would want, though. I've seen "normal people" get very frustrated because they couldn't figure out where they saved a file. They saved it in a folder called "Documents", but they then tried to find it in a different folder also called "Documents". Hardly seems problematic to show the path to the folder.