Nope, it's really true. I can't speak for CS programmes, but in areas like bioinformatics I have first-hand experience of people (aged ~21/22 years) not underst

Nope, it's really true. I can't speak for CS programmes, but in areas like bioinformatics I have first-hand experience of people (aged ~21/22 years) not understanding what file is or what a directory is. I think they're able to use them, but their understanding is so contextual to the place it's used. For example, they might be able to write some Python which creates a .csv, but connecting that to "open that file you created in a text editor" or "upload that file", they don't get it. I've read enough around people talking about this issue, and the consensus seems to be that people are so "app"-centric that thinking about a filesystem with applications accessing it in a generic way is alien to them. To be clear, in my class it's a small fraction who struggle like this, but it's real.