"Geeks = super bright people? Nice pat on our backs."
Don't put words in my mouth. "not super bright" is an euphemism for, uhm, simple people. Since I don't know how the poster I replied to defines geeks, I simply took an example from people I know that are 100% not geeks by their definition, whatever it may be.
"Your street and city metaphor seems out of place in this discussion."
How so? To me it seems like pretending people can only understand one level of hierarchy flies flat in the face of daily experience. You pretend the tupperware exists in isolation, it doesn't.
> "Non-geeks don't have the time, interest or inclination to catalogue and curate these sorts of structures."
Define non-geek then. Unless you mean "people who have too few items to need organization", I think that's wrong. I've met plenty of not super bright people who had for example a perfectly organized garage or apartment. I dare say it has nothing to do with geekyness. There's even tidy kids.. they cannot even program a computer, they cannot reach the cookie jar like I can, but they can and do organize the stuff they care about, in ways they care about.
> "The list that the author gives of everyday items that are easy to use ("cupboards, Tupperware, boxes, closets, pockets, wallets") all have the common property that they are not recursive"
What? You can put tupperware into a box, and put that into the cupboard. Usually, this is located in a house which is located in a street, which is in a city. And so on. The levels of nesting, nobody counted them.. but most everybody navigates them just fine.
You're saying users don't need or want organizing files in folders -- but then how do they not solve that non-existing problem perfectly?
Make the open dialog default to where the app last saved, make that in turn default to the home directory or whatever -- make it only display relevant file types -- done. That stuff is littered on the desktop is because dialogs defaulted to it.
And when someone wants to "backup all my files", they'll need a single-click option with a wizard either way, wether their filesystem has folders or not.
That said, I won't lie, while I have intricate folder structures, I also have a lot of "not yet sorted"-type ones. But doing away with folders would just extend that chaos across ALL my files, and also, with some stuff, there is just no replacement for them. for example, audio samples. sorting them by tags or date or anything a machine-readable just doesn't work. Get a good structure, be diligent about where you place stuff, and something like "find a good maracas sample and a flute" is no problem, with a few clicks I'm where I want to be.
Yes, metadata and databases are great, I'm all for them, but with folders you can basically apply metadata to stuff that otherwise cannot hold it. And when that database/metadata stuff gets ready to be usable for more than trivial things, why should it not be able to handle folder structures, which you can create and look at if you want, but don't have to? And if you have a filesystem where there is no hierarchy at all, why not add the possibility to nest it with metadata ("parent_id" ^^) -- ? People who don't need that, notice or need to know none of this stuff.
"the author does not think nested hierarchies are difficult. If he added "for nerds", I would agree with him."
Imagine you badly need to go to the bathroom, and the only building nearby is a huge hospital... will all the complexity hidden away in the various sections, rooms, and the patients themselves, delay your quest for the toilet even one second?
Also, the brain can only keep a bunch of things in mind at a time,no matter how they're presented. When complexity crosses the threshold, we group stuff together. And we also do this with a flat list, in some way or another. Reality and our concept of it is very deeply nested, but since we only handle a bunch of abstractions at the same time, that's fine.
With folders, you have something that is explorable. You can still search, but if you don't have folders to begin with, you can only search -- and anything you don't think of searching for is either lost forever, or can be seen only as part of a huuuuuge list.
IMHO it's regression alright, no two ways about it.
The ways something can be abused are not arguments against proper use of it.
"It's manual work that the computer should partially be doing for us."
I disagree, partially ^^ Tags, or where something is located; both can be part of the content.
The cool thing about folders is, if you don't want them, simply don't create them... but don't take it away from those who do themselves more good than harm with it, please :/
Don't put words in my mouth. "not super bright" is an euphemism for, uhm, simple people. Since I don't know how the poster I replied to defines geeks, I simply took an example from people I know that are 100% not geeks by their definition, whatever it may be.
"Your street and city metaphor seems out of place in this discussion."
How so? To me it seems like pretending people can only understand one level of hierarchy flies flat in the face of daily experience. You pretend the tupperware exists in isolation, it doesn't.