File System Usability Debate

I am 100% with you, but you seem to miss some key points: 1. the vast majority of people do not understand how computers work: I have met many folks in both my personal and work life that do not understand *what a file is*, much less a directory (folder). 2. This whole notion of "where things are stored on the computer" is completely alien to most folks. As a matter of fact, this notion has been shoved down the throat of all Android / iOS user since inception

To call it an abomination is annoyingly dramatic and "they don't know any better" is frankly elitist and I am really tired of these attitudes from HN.There are people in the world who grew up with and are used to platforms that have filing-cabinet abstractions (files and folders) and let them run their own code and customisations. Similarly, there are people in the world who grew up with devices that don't expose files and folders as readily and instead present things thro

Try thinking outside your specific needs. The raw filesystem is an antiquated interface that, honestly, a vast majority of people do not need. In fact, if you observe average computer users, the filesystem is what really impedes their ability to get things done. In fact, the filesystem introduces a huge complexity when the application does not know where its files exist. Did the document you downloaded in the Downloads folder? The Desktop? Documents? Or is it in the last folder you downloaded? U

It's a silly question. Is he suggesting computers will not have filesystems? No. He's saying users will not interact directly with files. Instead they will interact with "documents, music, pictures, videos, and downloads" without seeing them as files. Big deal. That's what desktop GUIs have been working toward ever since they started hiding file extensions, and they've succeeded to the point where many users don't understand that a song is probably a file on disk somewhere. My mother, amo

Nobody is maintaining file hierachies, but everyone manages files, folders, whether they are explicitly exposed via file manager or not.These are organizational concepts, not software concepts. People, even mobile uni students, have and must master them. As a result they get reinvented constantly in/as apps.What people are mad about is people are told 'this is how you will organize' rather than just learning to organize. It is absolutely fucking stupid.

Funnily enough, one of the biggest issues I have observed with my parents using a desktop computer is "well where did that thing go that I was looking at yesterday".Naked filesystems are intuitive to us as power users because we are in a mindset which many more casual computer users aren't. We understand that it's a hierarchy and that files have formats and extensions and file type associations and a whole list of technical details as to the how and why.On the other han

It's easy to say that files should be easy to understand by now but for a lot of people who aren't necessarily computer natives, there is a non-trivial learning curve as to what a "file" conceptually is: something that's on a storage device, that's in a specific part of some abstract folder tree, that is required to have a name, that has a type that may or may not in the name (file extensions), that has a format that some programs understand and others don't, t

The majority do not understand file systems, that is why. What do you NOT understand about this? Why do people keep making this comment.I like file systems, I understand them, but I used to program dos interrupts, and actually reading sectors of the drive. But I can understand filesystems, a lot of people don't.What people want is an all their photos grouped together, all the vides grouped together, all their documents together. They don't understand the different between the desktop, user

Every week, I encounter a user - just like I did in the 80's - who cannot explain the difference between a file and a folder."What do I use a folder for?", they ask, in the same breath that they request "some way to organize things logically".The no-filesystem movement has worked hard to eradicate this scourge from user experiences, but I fear that this is the devils work. Computer users should know what a file is, and what its for - and they should

Considering files have been at the center of how operating systems work since the beginning, and computers have been used in school and businesses for 30 years now, I find it disappointing that people are still confused by files.When people were confused by the keyboard, Jobs said that death would take care of that. When it came to files, he saw that as a problem that needed to be solved in the system, but I think it is more confusing on the iPad than macOS.People have had to use files, mo