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Well, no, they didn't. Search engines are useful when you've got a haystack of stuff and you're looking for a needle. They're particularly useful when you're l

Well, no, they didn't. Search engines are useful when you've got a haystack of stuff and you're looking for a needle. They're particularly useful when you're looking for something novel, usually an answer to a question. Often you don't know where the content is and you probably didn't create it either. They have two benefits: removing the tedium of hunting intelligently through an unknown haystack for some content, and doing it faster than could be done manually. They also come with the benefit of returning alternate results. The file/directory model is useful when you know roughly (or exactly) where something is. It's easier and often quicker to clicky clicky all the way to your content than it is to describe what you're looking for, waiting, wading through possibly irrelevant results, and then refining your query if you didn't succeed first time around. This model also has the benefit of returning related content (other files in the same directory), as opposed to alternate results. It's for this reason the file system is going to live on, simply because there are many daily situations in which clicking or tapping on directories to get to a file is easier and perceptually quicker. Both filesystems and search engines are useful in different scenarios, which is why we use both depending on which is easier in a given scenario.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
Very few users are organization savvy enough to use deep hierarchies of folders and files to organize their data. They are lazy and just throw it in one place, relying on LRU caches (when new and active) and search (when old and inactive) to find what they need. Developers are quite a different breed from mass conventional users. We still need file systems if only because we are more savvy enough to use it. Also, our tools tend to be low level and file oriented.
- kunai 13y ago
  Not quite; my parents both organize pictures into folders very well and organize them by date and tag them with metadata. They don't do the same for documents, but because every document of theirs tends to be unique, there really isn't any need to. Also note that these are the same parents who haven't the slightest idea of what a kernel is.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    However, I bet your parents know what filing cabinets and floppy disks are, while your kids most definitely do (or will) not! Pictures and music were also some of the first content classes to be de-filed [1] with apps like iTunes and iPhoto (the file hierarchy is still there, its just hidden from most users). I think this is one of those rare cases where the future is just staring us right in the face, like when Apple got rid of the floppy disk on the imac, or when CD ROM similarly went away. It doesn't mean file systems die right away, but they will become invisible to most users in one or fewer generations. [1] A funny punny

seanmcdirmid 13y ago

Very few users are organization savvy enough to use deep hierarchies of folders and files to organize their data. They are lazy and just throw it in one place, relying on LRU caches (when new and active) and search (when old and inactive) to find what they need. Developers are quite a different breed from mass conventional users. We still need file systems if only because we are more savvy enough to use it. Also, our tools tend to be low level and file oriented.

kunai 13y ago
Not quite; my parents both organize pictures into folders very well and organize them by date and tag them with metadata. They don't do the same for documents, but because every document of theirs tends to be unique, there really isn't any need to. Also note that these are the same parents who haven't the slightest idea of what a kernel is.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  However, I bet your parents know what filing cabinets and floppy disks are, while your kids most definitely do (or will) not! Pictures and music were also some of the first content classes to be de-filed [1] with apps like iTunes and iPhoto (the file hierarchy is still there, its just hidden from most users). I think this is one of those rare cases where the future is just staring us right in the face, like when Apple got rid of the floppy disk on the imac, or when CD ROM similarly went away. It doesn't mean file systems die right away, but they will become invisible to most users in one or fewer generations. [1] A funny punny