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A past coworker implemented a system like this. It was awful. He was the gatekeeper because the numbers had to be "just so" to meet his approval, and he was the

A past coworker implemented a system like this. It was awful. He was the gatekeeper because the numbers had to be "just so" to meet his approval, and he was the most senior person on the team. Limiting yourself to a handful of categories at each level makes sense, but numbering everything is a bad idea. It's busywork, and other people have to learn your idiosyncratic nomenclature. Just give the directories good names. Search really isn't as bad as the article suggests, especially with something like broot [1]. [1]: https://github.com/Canop/broot https://github.com/Canop/broot

emadda 3y ago
I didn’t like the numbers to begin with, but there are a few advantages: - After a while you associate the number with the subject so it becomes faster to visually scan a list. - You can type the number faster. They are shorter to reference.
- jen729w 3y ago
  I'm updating the workbook this morning and I just typed out this little anecdote. The topic is 'whether to put the JD number in the filename or not'. --- Last year the boss mailed me a five-year-old file. "Is this the latest version of this?", he asked. The file name started with the number. I even remember it, it was `31.17`. This allowed me to go directly to the now-archived project folder, immediately navigate to this file's home, and see no, the file he mailed me is the latest. This took me literally one minute. I could probably have found my way there just by the filename -- the folder structure was well organised enough to allow this -- but it would certainly have taken longer and I would not have been as certain that I was in the right place.
bafe 3y ago
To me these intricate classification system fall in the same category as people developing very advanced note taking setups, dotfile management tools or fully customisable, reproducible shell/IDE/editor setups. Very nice ideas on paper, but you can get most of the way with far less effort if you mostly stick to the defaults. Trying to perfect it to death ends up looking like busywork and frequently causes conflicts with other team members less obsessed with these secondary issues
jen729w 3y ago
> Search really isn't as bad as the article suggests, especially with something like broot Johnny here. The problem is "especially with something like x" because x never exists in any enterprise. Go ask your BigCorp SharePoint sysadmin for broot. The answer is no.
- brushfoot 3y ago
  Your mileage may vary, but I've certainly been able to bring my own tooling at my employers, broot included. Regardless, the main point is that numbering directories as a mnemonic is more of an encumbrance than a help. The justification on the website, that it prevents new directories from disrupting the user's mental map, is unconvincing. There are many methods for that that don't require a team to align on a numbering system and fixed directory order - shortcuts, bookmarks, snippet managers, broot, and z, to name a few. Not all methods are available in all contexts, but at least some are. Prepending numbers, on the other hand, forces users to, at best, waste time learning a system they might not need to use again or, at worst, bikeshed about what number to give a new directory or how to renumber if a change is needed. Users can't even skim directory names because the order is fixed and they've been robbed of the ability to sort alphabetically. The larger the team, the worse all this becomes.
  - jen729w 3y ago
    But don't people at your place just put numbers in front of things anyway? I've seen this literally everywhere I've worked. Not universally, but common enough that it no longer strikes me as unusual. They start at `01` and increment. I still remember back in 2007 at the National Australia Bank, the WinXP deployment project stored its DNS designs in folder `53`. My theory is that people do this because the alphabet is unreliable. What was the name of that DNS designs folder? I don't remember. But it could have been any one of a bunch of things: DNS, Designs (DNS), Dynamic Name System, so on. That choice is essentially arbitrary because we have this language full of synonyms. And so how do you remember it and the dozens of other folders that you use regularly? You don't! Numbers lock things in place. `53` will always be there. The person who created that doesn't give a hoot about `52` or `54`. They just know that their stuff is at `53`. Adding a whole bunch of new folders that start with 'B' would have messed up the spatial placement of our `53` folder, but now that's not an issue. `53` is always exactly where it was, and muscle memory can develop. I dunno. I haven't done the studies. I'd love to! But this is a pattern that I see over and over. To dismiss it as 'wrong' ignores the fact that people are doing this for a reason. There's something natural about it.

emadda 3y ago

I didn’t like the numbers to begin with, but there are a few advantages: - After a while you associate the number with the subject so it becomes faster to visually scan a list. - You can type the number faster. They are shorter to reference.

jen729w 3y ago
I'm updating the workbook this morning and I just typed out this little anecdote. The topic is 'whether to put the JD number in the filename or not'. --- Last year the boss mailed me a five-year-old file. "Is this the latest version of this?", he asked. The file name started with the number. I even remember it, it was `31.17`. This allowed me to go directly to the now-archived project folder, immediately navigate to this file's home, and see no, the file he mailed me is the latest. This took me literally one minute. I could probably have found my way there just by the filename -- the folder structure was well organised enough to allow this -- but it would certainly have taken longer and I would not have been as certain that I was in the right place.

bafe 3y ago

To me these intricate classification system fall in the same category as people developing very advanced note taking setups, dotfile management tools or fully customisable, reproducible shell/IDE/editor setups. Very nice ideas on paper, but you can get most of the way with far less effort if you mostly stick to the defaults. Trying to perfect it to death ends up looking like busywork and frequently causes conflicts with other team members less obsessed with these secondary issues

jen729w 3y ago

> Search really isn't as bad as the article suggests, especially with something like broot Johnny here. The problem is "especially with something like x" because x never exists in any enterprise. Go ask your BigCorp SharePoint sysadmin for broot. The answer is no.

brushfoot 3y ago
Your mileage may vary, but I've certainly been able to bring my own tooling at my employers, broot included. Regardless, the main point is that numbering directories as a mnemonic is more of an encumbrance than a help. The justification on the website, that it prevents new directories from disrupting the user's mental map, is unconvincing. There are many methods for that that don't require a team to align on a numbering system and fixed directory order - shortcuts, bookmarks, snippet managers, broot, and z, to name a few. Not all methods are available in all contexts, but at least some are. Prepending numbers, on the other hand, forces users to, at best, waste time learning a system they might not need to use again or, at worst, bikeshed about what number to give a new directory or how to renumber if a change is needed. Users can't even skim directory names because the order is fixed and they've been robbed of the ability to sort alphabetically. The larger the team, the worse all this becomes.
- jen729w 3y ago
  But don't people at your place just put numbers in front of things anyway? I've seen this literally everywhere I've worked. Not universally, but common enough that it no longer strikes me as unusual. They start at `01` and increment. I still remember back in 2007 at the National Australia Bank, the WinXP deployment project stored its DNS designs in folder `53`. My theory is that people do this because the alphabet is unreliable. What was the name of that DNS designs folder? I don't remember. But it could have been any one of a bunch of things: DNS, Designs (DNS), Dynamic Name System, so on. That choice is essentially arbitrary because we have this language full of synonyms. And so how do you remember it and the dozens of other folders that you use regularly? You don't! Numbers lock things in place. `53` will always be there. The person who created that doesn't give a hoot about `52` or `54`. They just know that their stuff is at `53`. Adding a whole bunch of new folders that start with 'B' would have messed up the spatial placement of our `53` folder, but now that's not an issue. `53` is always exactly where it was, and muscle memory can develop. I dunno. I haven't done the studies. I'd love to! But this is a pattern that I see over and over. To dismiss it as 'wrong' ignores the fact that people are doing this for a reason. There's something natural about it.