8 ms·

If I had a penny for every time someone on HN responds with something like this - "just become more disciplined and you don't need X" - I'd be a millionaire. Do

If I had a penny for every time someone on HN responds with something like this - "just become more disciplined and you don't need X" - I'd be a millionaire. Doesn't matter what it is, type systems, memory safety, a better UI for Git… there's always someone ready to chime in with how their workflow means these problems don't happen, or, even better, asking the question why would anyone need this? Yes, why would anyone need better search or a faster, easier to organise file system? I can't think why.

Jensson 5y ago
Having every file pollute a global namespace seems to require more discipline than the current hierarchical system where you can easily copy a directory tree without having to worry about breaking something else. That is the main problem with these so called "solutions", they usually take more effort and discipline than the problem they originally set out to solve. The right solution is just to learn the original system properly rather than trying to invent an even worse way to work around it.
- rolandog 5y ago
  Indeed; on one occasion I had to help my wife troubleshoot something on a shared folder in her workplace's Google Drive... I was shocked by my wife's colleagues extensive use of special characters because they wanted their file to appear first. The proposed solution won't be any better if the average user doesn't know how to name things properly or how to search for them.
- Khoth 5y ago
  Yeah, you can see the downside in the demo video. When he shows off the search for pictures, there's a random mixture of actual photos and things like toolbar icons and whatnot. Sure, you could fix this by tagging everything and doing a more complex search, but that sounds like a lot of work and discipline, more than eg the guy doing the demo was willing to put into it.
  - didgetmaster 5y ago
    Actually no. I wanted the demo video to be short (4 minutes) so I didn't do a lot of complex searches. I have other videos, but to show everything takes a 20 minute video and I didn't think that was a good length for an introduction.
UltraViolence 5y ago
Because such a system would entail its own drawbacks, such as a larger CPU load or a more fragile disk organization, whilst most people wouldn't really need it.
em-bee 5y ago
i try to organize my stuff, but sometimes i forget where in the organization i put something. then a brute-force search helps. if i keep good directory and filenames, then locate will do the trick. once i found one item, any related other things are usually nearby.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Plus, this is how we organise [0] stuff in real life. Folders/boxes/envelopes in boxes. Boxes in cupboards. Cupboards in rooms. It's easier to get to hierarchical filesytems from this. Things are found by their group, or their proximity to a more used item. Filesystems, search, most-recently-accessed lists, an index; they are close to real life things. In my fantasy world people would e.g. stick to .jpg, .JPG or .jpeg or .JPEG (pick one, damnit) but otherwise I quite like the tools we have. [0] or try to
  - dividedbyzero 5y ago
    > Plus, this is how we organise [0] stuff in real life. The way I organize people I know and places and all sorts of other entities I cannot physically place into boxes and folders is a lot more like the tag approach, though.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      Oh really? I've got a few boxes of guys stored away and, like Mitt Romney, binders full of women. (*ba-doom-tish* for the-in-retrospect much-maligned Mitt Romney on this day)
  - em-bee 5y ago
    folders are more convenient because they are part of the file system. there is no ls by tag or even a gui filemanager that shows files by tag. that's one reason why tags need to be part of the filesystem, because if they are not, then most filemanagers would not support them. and technically, file extensions are kind of like tags. and it's really ugly that they are in the filename string. that messes up a lot of things. it would be better if they were proper tags independent of the name. so you can rename a file without changing the tags, similar to the problem with EXIF. or more importantly, you could reference a file without that reference depending on the tags of the file. your jpg/jpeg example is also a problem caused by this situation. it would go away with proper tags
laumars 5y ago
I’m all for optimising usability but there comes a point where one over optimises. While I love the app-orientated design of Android and iOS (ie you share data between apps rather than apps sharing a file system), they are effectively toy OSs for toy devices. Sure some people are hugely productive on them these days but they’re the exception rather than the norm. Whereas I depend on a file system to organise my data. In fact the file system is directly interpreted as name spacing in a number of different programming languages. I get that most people are either too lazy or too technologically inept to own a computer but this race to the bottom to support everyone who doesn’t give a crap has to end somewhere. You see it with Windows UI in Win11 removing popular options so the designers can streamline the UI. You see it with this article too. Some people are always going to struggle simply because they are forced to use a computer day in and day out rather than them wanting to use it. But designing a unified system pandering for them but servicing everyone just makes the experience shit for those of us how genuinely know how to use a computer and depend on these features. To use a car analogy (because for some reason people love comparing cars to computers…) I have no issue with track cars being sold without air con, a radio, etc because they’re a toy not a tool. So you optimise for that single purpose: racing on the track. But I sure as hell want the kitchen sink thrown into my family car. I sometimes wonder if the problem isn’t computers but rather our assumption that everyone should be able to use a computer without training. If your job depends on using a file system correctly then you should be trained on that in exactly the same way that you’re taught how to use any of the specialist applications. In fact pre-computers, companies did exactly that with training their staff in how the filing system works!
atoav 5y ago
A better search and tagging can be valuable tools. But no matter how good search gets, it will not stop users from putting files untagged into one big junk folder. Being able to think about how to order your files is a fundamental skill in this day and age and doing this on a big scale does indeed require discipline. IMO it is just a false hope to think tags would help with the root cause of a lack of care about the data.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Being able to think about how to order your files is a fundamental skill in this day and age and doing this on a big scale does indeed require discipline. I'm not sure that's true, because no one does that on mobile devices. Some people have even suggested that young people who've grown up with mobile phones struggle with filesystems because they have no experience of file management despite having plenty of experience of computing. Mobiles have shown that it's possible to remove the concept of files entirely from the user facing side of an OS. The same is true to a lesser extent with online office suites. You don't need to know the name of a file in Google Docs - you refer to things by their titles. Moving from file names to tags, or any meta data really, would be possible. Whether it'd be better is a matter of opinion.
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    >Mobiles have shown that it's possible to remove the concept of files entirely from the user facing side of an OS. ... and completely cripple the user's creative powers, making him a passive consumer. you cannot get serious work done on mobile and that is as true now as it was ten years ago.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    > Mobiles have shown that it's possible to remove the concept of files entirely from the user facing side of an OS. That is an inherent weakness of mobile OS's and prevents them from competing with traditional computers in workplaces. It works as long as you never want to do anything complicated with your computer, but most people working in offices needs the organization offered by a file system, not to mention how crippling this would be to use as a development environment.
selfhoster11 5y ago
By analogy: if you were to store all your paper copies of bank statements, bills, mortgage papers, etc... Would you just dump them in one big pile in the middle of your living room, or would you sort them into vaguely themed folders to impose some organisation? Hierarchical filesystems are valuable to those that want to organise data in ways that tags can only emulate.
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
  Can I shout "Plumber invoice 2021" at that pile and the right document will come flying out? Or just "invoices 2021"? A pile that could do this would probably be fine for me.
  - toto444 5y ago
    A directory structure : Invoices > 2021 > Plumber is easy to browse and makes it easy for a machine to retrieve it as well.
    - ibmfud 5y ago
      Please can I have all the Plumber correspondence from Joe the Plumber, regardless of year or document type?
      - majewsky 5y ago
        Modern shells have double-star globs for traversing arbitrary numbers of layers, so I would do something like this with: ls **/*Plumber*
        ibmfud 5y ago
        Thanks, you just got me all the docs from Samantha the Plumber and Amit the Plumber too!
        deleted 5y ago
bawolff 5y ago
The solution being proposed here seems to also involve a lot of discipline (files aren't going to tag themselves or at least not usefully)
diffeomorphism 5y ago
> Yes, why would anyone need better search or a faster, easier to organise file system? I can't think why. Sounds good, but unfortunately the article is not proposing any of that. So, counter question: of course you need that, but how would the proposal of the article actual do anything about that?
- brigandish 5y ago
  Surely that's the tagging. I use tags extensively on my Mac because it's so useful to me but it's clearly an afterthought for Apple, and I struggle to use it at times. Making tags a first class citizen would improve things immensely. The search index being a first class citizen again, would also improve things - why should I find Spotlight indexes loitering in the dark corners of my filesystem as dot files? I know there's a file index kept somewhere full of inodes and suchlike, why isn't search index data kept with it? I also don't know why I have to rely on file system watchers that seem to be external to the file system and thus eventually sucking vast amounts of CPU when a hook into the main index would suffice. I don't write file systems so I can't tell why this is the case, or in fact, if it is the case but appears to me that it isn't every time I need to kill a file watcher. Most of the suggestions in the article seemed good to me (immutable files, smaller meta data pages etc), I'm sure there are others around, but I'm also not sure why there's a need among some to protect the status quo by relying on good behaviour, of all things.
  - memetomancer 5y ago
    > I use tags extensively on my Mac... In other words, you have developed a disciplined habit of tagging your files. If I had a penny...
    - brigandish 5y ago
      Where's the "don't need X" part? Have I dismissed hierarchical file systems out of hand? Where did I suggest greater discipline should be the approach. I also use automated tools to help me with the tagging but I think that it's not a magic bullet - did I claim it was? No, and I didn't do any of the other things I asked for evidence of either. So, if I had a penny for every time someone misquoted me I'd have a penny more right now.
ptero 5y ago
The article proposes to replace the current file system approach (which works just fine for me, by the way, thank you very much) with something different to solve a problem that I (just like the post you reply to) have no interest in. Better search? Sure! Improved speed of storage and retrieval? Great! But either show that it is not degrading current functionality or be ready for pushback from people suspicious that their current setups will break. My 2c.
skywhopper 5y ago
I guess the point is, the proposed system wouldn’t actually be easier to organize. The metadata that would make searching so easy is what’s missing. But a new data structure doesn’t solve for the missing metadata. And without that extra metadata, searching would not actually be improved.
nonameiguess 5y ago
This is obviously hyperbole and you're well aware you haven't read 100 million Hacker News comments, let alone that many with exactly the same basic message. But I was curious what this might be equivalent to in terms of time investment. A quick style guide check recommends 15-20 words per sentence for English language written communication. Assuming the low end of that, and minimal single-sentence comments, that is still equivalent to reading the entire 14-book Wheel of Time series, which tends to take most people several years, 369 times.
max51 5y ago
don't you think a tag system would require even more discipline? what do you think happens if you make a mistake with your tags and/or there are typos in the filename? With a directory structure, you can navigate to the location and see the list of items to quickly identify what you were looking for. It is far more forgiving when it comes to poor organisation or mistakes. With a pure tag system, a file with the wrong name/tags is pretty much forever lost.
- didgetmaster 5y ago
  Not necessarily. Missing or misspelled tags could be discovered just like a row in a database that has a column value that is missing or misspelled can be. For example if you want all your photos to have a 'Year' tag attached for when the photo is taken, just query for all photos WHERE 'Year = NULL'. The same goes for values like names. If you see that you have 10,000 files that have 'Name = Karl' attached but only one that has 'Name = Kral' attached, then that is an easy fix.
  - max51 5y ago
    With only a few hundred file, it's easy to look at the list and spot the outliers. In a real world scenario, how would you know that a few dozen files are missing when you search for "karl" and the files tagged with "Kral" don't show up? On a small file collections that only you has access to, you might remember them and notice that they aren't part of the results but that doesn't work for large libraries or if multiple people are collaborating. With a directory structure at least you can look into the folder of the project, see what's inside and open the files to find the one you were looking for. If you were looking for a specific Word file and only a dozen of them are present in the folder, you can always just open all of them manually to check what's inside regardless of how poorly they were named/managed. Good luck trying to find the Word file with bad tags when searching for "*.docx" return thousands of results.
    - didgetmaster 5y ago
      Cleaning data for tags is about the same as cleaning data in a relational database table. Here is a demo video of how Didgets does that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqkNeU1LYEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqkNeU1LYEQ Just think of each defined tag as one of the columns in the table.

Jensson 5y ago

Having every file pollute a global namespace seems to require more discipline than the current hierarchical system where you can easily copy a directory tree without having to worry about breaking something else. That is the main problem with these so called "solutions", they usually take more effort and discipline than the problem they originally set out to solve. The right solution is just to learn the original system properly rather than trying to invent an even worse way to work around it.

rolandog 5y ago
Indeed; on one occasion I had to help my wife troubleshoot something on a shared folder in her workplace's Google Drive... I was shocked by my wife's colleagues extensive use of special characters because they wanted their file to appear first. The proposed solution won't be any better if the average user doesn't know how to name things properly or how to search for them.
Khoth 5y ago
Yeah, you can see the downside in the demo video. When he shows off the search for pictures, there's a random mixture of actual photos and things like toolbar icons and whatnot. Sure, you could fix this by tagging everything and doing a more complex search, but that sounds like a lot of work and discipline, more than eg the guy doing the demo was willing to put into it.
- didgetmaster 5y ago
  Actually no. I wanted the demo video to be short (4 minutes) so I didn't do a lot of complex searches. I have other videos, but to show everything takes a 20 minute video and I didn't think that was a good length for an introduction.

UltraViolence 5y ago

Because such a system would entail its own drawbacks, such as a larger CPU load or a more fragile disk organization, whilst most people wouldn't really need it.

em-bee 5y ago

i try to organize my stuff, but sometimes i forget where in the organization i put something. then a brute-force search helps. if i keep good directory and filenames, then locate will do the trick. once i found one item, any related other things are usually nearby.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Plus, this is how we organise [0] stuff in real life. Folders/boxes/envelopes in boxes. Boxes in cupboards. Cupboards in rooms. It's easier to get to hierarchical filesytems from this. Things are found by their group, or their proximity to a more used item. Filesystems, search, most-recently-accessed lists, an index; they are close to real life things. In my fantasy world people would e.g. stick to .jpg, .JPG or .jpeg or .JPEG (pick one, damnit) but otherwise I quite like the tools we have. [0] or try to
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
  > Plus, this is how we organise [0] stuff in real life. The way I organize people I know and places and all sorts of other entities I cannot physically place into boxes and folders is a lot more like the tag approach, though.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Oh really? I've got a few boxes of guys stored away and, like Mitt Romney, binders full of women. (*ba-doom-tish* for the-in-retrospect much-maligned Mitt Romney on this day)
- em-bee 5y ago
  folders are more convenient because they are part of the file system. there is no ls by tag or even a gui filemanager that shows files by tag. that's one reason why tags need to be part of the filesystem, because if they are not, then most filemanagers would not support them. and technically, file extensions are kind of like tags. and it's really ugly that they are in the filename string. that messes up a lot of things. it would be better if they were proper tags independent of the name. so you can rename a file without changing the tags, similar to the problem with EXIF. or more importantly, you could reference a file without that reference depending on the tags of the file. your jpg/jpeg example is also a problem caused by this situation. it would go away with proper tags

laumars 5y ago

I’m all for optimising usability but there comes a point where one over optimises. While I love the app-orientated design of Android and iOS (ie you share data between apps rather than apps sharing a file system), they are effectively toy OSs for toy devices. Sure some people are hugely productive on them these days but they’re the exception rather than the norm. Whereas I depend on a file system to organise my data. In fact the file system is directly interpreted as name spacing in a number of different programming languages. I get that most people are either too lazy or too technologically inept to own a computer but this race to the bottom to support everyone who doesn’t give a crap has to end somewhere. You see it with Windows UI in Win11 removing popular options so the designers can streamline the UI. You see it with this article too. Some people are always going to struggle simply because they are forced to use a computer day in and day out rather than them wanting to use it. But designing a unified system pandering for them but servicing everyone just makes the experience shit for those of us how genuinely know how to use a computer and depend on these features. To use a car analogy (because for some reason people love comparing cars to computers…) I have no issue with track cars being sold without air con, a radio, etc because they’re a toy not a tool. So you optimise for that single purpose: racing on the track. But I sure as hell want the kitchen sink thrown into my family car. I sometimes wonder if the problem isn’t computers but rather our assumption that everyone should be able to use a computer without training. If your job depends on using a file system correctly then you should be trained on that in exactly the same way that you’re taught how to use any of the specialist applications. In fact pre-computers, companies did exactly that with training their staff in how the filing system works!

atoav 5y ago

A better search and tagging can be valuable tools. But no matter how good search gets, it will not stop users from putting files untagged into one big junk folder. Being able to think about how to order your files is a fundamental skill in this day and age and doing this on a big scale does indeed require discipline. IMO it is just a false hope to think tags would help with the root cause of a lack of care about the data.

onion2k 5y ago
Being able to think about how to order your files is a fundamental skill in this day and age and doing this on a big scale does indeed require discipline. I'm not sure that's true, because no one does that on mobile devices. Some people have even suggested that young people who've grown up with mobile phones struggle with filesystems because they have no experience of file management despite having plenty of experience of computing. Mobiles have shown that it's possible to remove the concept of files entirely from the user facing side of an OS. The same is true to a lesser extent with online office suites. You don't need to know the name of a file in Google Docs - you refer to things by their titles. Moving from file names to tags, or any meta data really, would be possible. Whether it'd be better is a matter of opinion.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  >Mobiles have shown that it's possible to remove the concept of files entirely from the user facing side of an OS. ... and completely cripple the user's creative powers, making him a passive consumer. you cannot get serious work done on mobile and that is as true now as it was ten years ago.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > Mobiles have shown that it's possible to remove the concept of files entirely from the user facing side of an OS. That is an inherent weakness of mobile OS's and prevents them from competing with traditional computers in workplaces. It works as long as you never want to do anything complicated with your computer, but most people working in offices needs the organization offered by a file system, not to mention how crippling this would be to use as a development environment.

selfhoster11 5y ago

By analogy: if you were to store all your paper copies of bank statements, bills, mortgage papers, etc... Would you just dump them in one big pile in the middle of your living room, or would you sort them into vaguely themed folders to impose some organisation? Hierarchical filesystems are valuable to those that want to organise data in ways that tags can only emulate.

dividedbyzero 5y ago
Can I shout "Plumber invoice 2021" at that pile and the right document will come flying out? Or just "invoices 2021"? A pile that could do this would probably be fine for me.
- toto444 5y ago
  A directory structure : Invoices > 2021 > Plumber is easy to browse and makes it easy for a machine to retrieve it as well.
  - ibmfud 5y ago
    Please can I have all the Plumber correspondence from Joe the Plumber, regardless of year or document type?
    - majewsky 5y ago
      Modern shells have double-star globs for traversing arbitrary numbers of layers, so I would do something like this with: ls **/*Plumber*
      - ibmfud 5y ago
        Thanks, you just got me all the docs from Samantha the Plumber and Amit the Plumber too!
        deleted 5y ago

bawolff 5y ago

The solution being proposed here seems to also involve a lot of discipline (files aren't going to tag themselves or at least not usefully)

diffeomorphism 5y ago

> Yes, why would anyone need better search or a faster, easier to organise file system? I can't think why. Sounds good, but unfortunately the article is not proposing any of that. So, counter question: of course you need that, but how would the proposal of the article actual do anything about that?

brigandish 5y ago
Surely that's the tagging. I use tags extensively on my Mac because it's so useful to me but it's clearly an afterthought for Apple, and I struggle to use it at times. Making tags a first class citizen would improve things immensely. The search index being a first class citizen again, would also improve things - why should I find Spotlight indexes loitering in the dark corners of my filesystem as dot files? I know there's a file index kept somewhere full of inodes and suchlike, why isn't search index data kept with it? I also don't know why I have to rely on file system watchers that seem to be external to the file system and thus eventually sucking vast amounts of CPU when a hook into the main index would suffice. I don't write file systems so I can't tell why this is the case, or in fact, if it is the case but appears to me that it isn't every time I need to kill a file watcher. Most of the suggestions in the article seemed good to me (immutable files, smaller meta data pages etc), I'm sure there are others around, but I'm also not sure why there's a need among some to protect the status quo by relying on good behaviour, of all things.
- memetomancer 5y ago
  > I use tags extensively on my Mac... In other words, you have developed a disciplined habit of tagging your files. If I had a penny...
  - brigandish 5y ago
    Where's the "don't need X" part? Have I dismissed hierarchical file systems out of hand? Where did I suggest greater discipline should be the approach. I also use automated tools to help me with the tagging but I think that it's not a magic bullet - did I claim it was? No, and I didn't do any of the other things I asked for evidence of either. So, if I had a penny for every time someone misquoted me I'd have a penny more right now.

ptero 5y ago

The article proposes to replace the current file system approach (which works just fine for me, by the way, thank you very much) with something different to solve a problem that I (just like the post you reply to) have no interest in. Better search? Sure! Improved speed of storage and retrieval? Great! But either show that it is not degrading current functionality or be ready for pushback from people suspicious that their current setups will break. My 2c.

skywhopper 5y ago

I guess the point is, the proposed system wouldn’t actually be easier to organize. The metadata that would make searching so easy is what’s missing. But a new data structure doesn’t solve for the missing metadata. And without that extra metadata, searching would not actually be improved.

nonameiguess 5y ago

This is obviously hyperbole and you're well aware you haven't read 100 million Hacker News comments, let alone that many with exactly the same basic message. But I was curious what this might be equivalent to in terms of time investment. A quick style guide check recommends 15-20 words per sentence for English language written communication. Assuming the low end of that, and minimal single-sentence comments, that is still equivalent to reading the entire 14-book Wheel of Time series, which tends to take most people several years, 369 times.

max51 5y ago

don't you think a tag system would require even more discipline? what do you think happens if you make a mistake with your tags and/or there are typos in the filename? With a directory structure, you can navigate to the location and see the list of items to quickly identify what you were looking for. It is far more forgiving when it comes to poor organisation or mistakes. With a pure tag system, a file with the wrong name/tags is pretty much forever lost.

didgetmaster 5y ago
Not necessarily. Missing or misspelled tags could be discovered just like a row in a database that has a column value that is missing or misspelled can be. For example if you want all your photos to have a 'Year' tag attached for when the photo is taken, just query for all photos WHERE 'Year = NULL'. The same goes for values like names. If you see that you have 10,000 files that have 'Name = Karl' attached but only one that has 'Name = Kral' attached, then that is an easy fix.
- max51 5y ago
  With only a few hundred file, it's easy to look at the list and spot the outliers. In a real world scenario, how would you know that a few dozen files are missing when you search for "karl" and the files tagged with "Kral" don't show up? On a small file collections that only you has access to, you might remember them and notice that they aren't part of the results but that doesn't work for large libraries or if multiple people are collaborating. With a directory structure at least you can look into the folder of the project, see what's inside and open the files to find the one you were looking for. If you were looking for a specific Word file and only a dozen of them are present in the folder, you can always just open all of them manually to check what's inside regardless of how poorly they were named/managed. Good luck trying to find the Word file with bad tags when searching for "*.docx" return thousands of results.
  - didgetmaster 5y ago
    Cleaning data for tags is about the same as cleaning data in a relational database table. Here is a demo video of how Didgets does that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqkNeU1LYEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqkNeU1LYEQ Just think of each defined tag as one of the columns in the table.