4 ms·

> It's just more natural to "see" things that you move. This is the fallacy of logos. When I was learning about files and filesystems, the GUI had not even be

by bregma 6y ago

> It's just more natural to "see" things that you move. This is the fallacy of logos. When I was learning about files and filesystems, the GUI had not even been invented. It is certainly not natural to me to conceive of file operations as cartoons moving around on a TV screen. What's happening here is you're mistaking what you may have first learned for what is normal or natural. That it seems normal or natural to you is an inherent property of your experience, not an inherent property of file manipulation.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
I get their point, though. It's less about seeing the animation of the move, and more about seeing state. Seeing state you're manipulating is helpful. CLIs, being naturally line-oriented, don't give you that. Myself, I do a lot of file management in Emacs these days. Dired - Emacs folder viewer - essentially turns output of `ls` into interactive folder listing, that you can manipulate the way you'd use an orthodox file manager like Norton Commander or Midnight Commander, but that you can also just edit as text and have Emacs apply changes to the file system. To kind of boost your point about "normal" being learnable, it's absolutely normal for me now to expect to be able to rename files or change permissions by editing output of `ls`.
syl_sau 6y ago
When I say "naturally" I'm talking about the way we, as humans, naturally interact with our environment. Sight may be the most important of our senses. We don't give orders to physical objects when we want to move them. I guess that's why we call files, well, "files". Now, as others have pointed out, when it comes to specific operations involving redundant tasks, it's obviously easier to use CLI (`rename JPG jpg *.JPG`, etc.) (though in the case of mass renaming, it's less confusing to use Thunar's Rename right-click option).

by bregma 6y ago

TeMPOraL 6y ago

I get their point, though. It's less about seeing the animation of the move, and more about seeing state. Seeing state you're manipulating is helpful. CLIs, being naturally line-oriented, don't give you that. Myself, I do a lot of file management in Emacs these days. Dired - Emacs folder viewer - essentially turns output of `ls` into interactive folder listing, that you can manipulate the way you'd use an orthodox file manager like Norton Commander or Midnight Commander, but that you can also just edit as text and have Emacs apply changes to the file system. To kind of boost your point about "normal" being learnable, it's absolutely normal for me now to expect to be able to rename files or change permissions by editing output of `ls`.

syl_sau 6y ago

When I say "naturally" I'm talking about the way we, as humans, naturally interact with our environment. Sight may be the most important of our senses. We don't give orders to physical objects when we want to move them. I guess that's why we call files, well, "files". Now, as others have pointed out, when it comes to specific operations involving redundant tasks, it's obviously easier to use CLI (`rename JPG jpg *.JPG`, etc.) (though in the case of mass renaming, it's less confusing to use Thunar's Rename right-click option).