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> a very difficult time understanding that the filesystem is a hierarchy. You are obviously right. But people have been using hierarchies for millennia, e.g. t
by ableal 14y ago
> a very difficult time understanding that the filesystem is a hierarchy.
You are obviously right. But people have been using hierarchies for millennia, e.g. the military ones. Illiterate peasants had no trouble with legion, cohort, centuria, contubernia.
I wonder if the cognitive problem is that the classic file system is an ungraded, unlimited hierarchy - all folders are equal, and you can not find a folders "grade".
Perhaps we would have been better off with an artificial limit of four or six named levels. Instead we're getting the hierarchy removed from general use devices ...
(Leaving aside the "use a hash, not a tree" possibility.)
- tammer 14y agoI'm toying with the idea that the problem is due to Apple and Microsoft's decisions to obfuscate the entire metaphor. With the unix filesystem, "/" is the quintessential representation of the ungraded, unlimited hierarchy. Once I understand what you mean by the word "root," and that root is represented by "/", I can intuitively understand this hierarchy. With Windows, this "ungraded, unlimited" nature is terribly obscured by the Drive metaphor, as well as the creation of special "My" folders and libraries. In my experience, most users never venture out of these special folders to explore the rest of the filesystem. It's little wonder, now that I think about it, that this is so difficult for users: most never see the filesystem as a real hierarchy, only as the segmented randomness of the "My Computer" window. Mac OS is slightly better, but still retains many of the same metaphors through the styling of the initial Finder window and the home directory. Perhaps the issue is not one of conception but simply the UX that serves as educator for these basic ideas.