5 ms·

Completely sensational, file systems will continue to exist as long as we use storage devices. The end-user interacting with the low-level interface may be phas

by freyrs3 13y ago

Completely sensational, file systems will continue to exist as long as we use storage devices. The end-user interacting with the low-level interface may be phased out though.

icebraining 13y ago
I think the argument was purely about UI semantics. People here seem to be missing the point completely, in my opinion.
- freyrs3 13y ago
  Then the author is conflating the term "file manager" with "file system".
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    No he's not, you are just twisting the argument so it is easier to knock down, which is a completely normal relevance fallacy even if you didn't intend it as such. File systems, physical memory addresses, and processing units exist in iOS, the user just isn't exposed to it. What many of us our proposing is that filing cabinets as user-facing abstractions in particular are not very useful. How many users save their files to more than a couple of locations (Documents and Desktop) these days? Rather, they just throw them all in one place and rely on search or LRU caches to find things.
    - Gigablah 13y ago
      > rely on search or LRU caches to find things Which is pretty awful in current implementations. Search in Windows is slow (contrast that with a 3rd party app like Everything, which gives results almost instantaneously). As for Mac... maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I've almost never managed to find anything with Finder.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    But it's not just the file manager, it's the file themselves as user interface semantics. Right now, the file system is more than just a data storage layer, it's also a set of concepts (files, directories, etc) with which the user interacts through almost all applications. For example, when I click on a link to a paper, I'm not just viewing an abstract document, I'm downloading and opening a PDF file, and this is exposed to the user as the UI to manage the content. OP is talking about the file system as that set of concepts, and claims they'll be obsolete and mostly replaced by more abstract views of the content we use.
    - freyrs3 13y ago
      > Right now, the file system is more than just a data storage layer, it's also a set of concepts (files, directories, etc) with which the user interacts through almost all applications. A filesystem is an API for making system calls to deal with data access on storage devices. It isn't necessary for a filesystem to have the concepts of directories or even files. Look at Plan9 for instance. The word "filesystem" is being overloaded to mean something more general than what it means in an operating system discussion.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        A filesystem is an API for making system calls to deal with data access on storage devices. Yes, and that API involves certain core concepts, like files (and usually directories), which are exposed to the user. You open files, you save them, you copy them. The UI semantics are almost a 1:1 mapping of the base API. It isn't necessary for a filesystem to have the concepts of directories or even files. Look at Plan9 for instance. I don't get your last point; Fossil has both, and as far as I know, the whole core of Plan9 is that everything is a file, achieving what UNIX couldn't. And how can a filesystem not have files? The very definition of the word implies the storage and/or retrieval of files. There are other data stores which don't depend on a concept of files (e.g., RDBMSs), but they aren't filesystems. The word "filesystem" is being overloaded to mean somethng more general than what it means in an operating system discussion. I disagree; the author is talking about the filesystem, as it's exposed to the user. Sure, it's not the layer we usually talk about, but it's the same base concept.
- notacoward 13y ago
  ...or maybe the OP was missing the point. Perhaps the directory/folder as a primary user-visible organizing principle is going to become obsolete. As a filesystem developer I would welcome a change to that paradigm, if it means that we can shed some of the baggage that has grown around it and get back to a simpler interface. However, that's not what the OP said. He claimed that the filesystem is going to become obsolete, and that's just silly. Even if documents are grouped by app and users apply tags and so on then the apps and the OS itself still need the kind of structure that a filesystem provides - hierarchical directories for different users/apps, mounting filesystems on top of one another, permissions, etc. Whatever it looks like on the outside, it's still going to be filesystems on the inside. If the author meant the Finder/Explorer was becoming obsolete, then he should have chosen different terms.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    He's talking about the file system has a set of concepts (files, directories, etc) that are exposed to the user interface in almost every (desktop) application; it's not just the file managers like Explorer. It is the filesystem, but as the UI semantics, not the underlying storage mechanism.

by freyrs3 13y ago

Completely sensational, file systems will continue to exist as long as we use storage devices. The end-user interacting with the low-level interface may be phased out though.

icebraining 13y ago

I think the argument was purely about UI semantics. People here seem to be missing the point completely, in my opinion.

freyrs3 13y ago
Then the author is conflating the term "file manager" with "file system".
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  No he's not, you are just twisting the argument so it is easier to knock down, which is a completely normal relevance fallacy even if you didn't intend it as such. File systems, physical memory addresses, and processing units exist in iOS, the user just isn't exposed to it. What many of us our proposing is that filing cabinets as user-facing abstractions in particular are not very useful. How many users save their files to more than a couple of locations (Documents and Desktop) these days? Rather, they just throw them all in one place and rely on search or LRU caches to find things.
  - Gigablah 13y ago
    > rely on search or LRU caches to find things Which is pretty awful in current implementations. Search in Windows is slow (contrast that with a 3rd party app like Everything, which gives results almost instantaneously). As for Mac... maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I've almost never managed to find anything with Finder.
- icebraining 13y ago
  But it's not just the file manager, it's the file themselves as user interface semantics. Right now, the file system is more than just a data storage layer, it's also a set of concepts (files, directories, etc) with which the user interacts through almost all applications. For example, when I click on a link to a paper, I'm not just viewing an abstract document, I'm downloading and opening a PDF file, and this is exposed to the user as the UI to manage the content. OP is talking about the file system as that set of concepts, and claims they'll be obsolete and mostly replaced by more abstract views of the content we use.
  - freyrs3 13y ago
    > Right now, the file system is more than just a data storage layer, it's also a set of concepts (files, directories, etc) with which the user interacts through almost all applications. A filesystem is an API for making system calls to deal with data access on storage devices. It isn't necessary for a filesystem to have the concepts of directories or even files. Look at Plan9 for instance. The word "filesystem" is being overloaded to mean something more general than what it means in an operating system discussion.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      A filesystem is an API for making system calls to deal with data access on storage devices. Yes, and that API involves certain core concepts, like files (and usually directories), which are exposed to the user. You open files, you save them, you copy them. The UI semantics are almost a 1:1 mapping of the base API. It isn't necessary for a filesystem to have the concepts of directories or even files. Look at Plan9 for instance. I don't get your last point; Fossil has both, and as far as I know, the whole core of Plan9 is that everything is a file, achieving what UNIX couldn't. And how can a filesystem not have files? The very definition of the word implies the storage and/or retrieval of files. There are other data stores which don't depend on a concept of files (e.g., RDBMSs), but they aren't filesystems. The word "filesystem" is being overloaded to mean somethng more general than what it means in an operating system discussion. I disagree; the author is talking about the filesystem, as it's exposed to the user. Sure, it's not the layer we usually talk about, but it's the same base concept.
notacoward 13y ago
...or maybe the OP was missing the point. Perhaps the directory/folder as a primary user-visible organizing principle is going to become obsolete. As a filesystem developer I would welcome a change to that paradigm, if it means that we can shed some of the baggage that has grown around it and get back to a simpler interface. However, that's not what the OP said. He claimed that the filesystem is going to become obsolete, and that's just silly. Even if documents are grouped by app and users apply tags and so on then the apps and the OS itself still need the kind of structure that a filesystem provides - hierarchical directories for different users/apps, mounting filesystems on top of one another, permissions, etc. Whatever it looks like on the outside, it's still going to be filesystems on the inside. If the author meant the Finder/Explorer was becoming obsolete, then he should have chosen different terms.
- icebraining 13y ago
  He's talking about the file system has a set of concepts (files, directories, etc) that are exposed to the user interface in almost every (desktop) application; it's not just the file managers like Explorer. It is the filesystem, but as the UI semantics, not the underlying storage mechanism.