Report suggests many Gen Z students do not know how to use a basic file directory

[Jeskspie]

Does this mean things like butterFS, fat32, ntfs
If so I dont get why people are getting so pressed about it as not many people need to change the file system or even know what it is

[sub68]

On 9/23/2021 at 8:14 AM, SlidewaysZ said:

I'd love to see these students try and navigate through folders in the terminal window

or students navigating ubuntu

[Bramimond]

I'm filing that one as a win for the people waging a war on general purpose computing. People don't miss what they do not know.

[aramini]

2 hours ago, Arch User said:

Does this mean things like butterFS, fat32, ntfs
If so I dont get why people are getting so pressed about it as not many people need to change the file system or even know what it is

I think more the directory/file hierarchy structure than the file system. I wouldn't necessarily expect 1st year CS students to understand the lower level inner workings of the file system format, how things work on a hard drive block/sector level, etc.

 

I think this is more about basic navigation skills.

 

2 hours ago, sub68 said:

On 9/23/2021 at 5:14 AM, SlidewaysZ said:

window

or students navigating ubuntu

once you understand the concept of the root of the hard drive (top level in the hierarchy), folder/file hierarchy, it seems it wouldn't matter what OS you are on. They should be taught this in a generalized way.

 

Knowing the difference between /root, /var, /log /usr, /home, /dev, /etc, and the purpose of those directories is more OS specific and not necessarily a navigation issue. I could "cd /dev/" then "ls -la" or use the gui file manager to click through to there, and still maybe not understand that the purpose of the /dev directory is where the devices are stored.

 

 

[aramini]

 

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

File directories are not that intuitive tbh. I only learned how to navigate by spending time with Finder and File Explorer. If the scope of my experience with tech was just my phone...yeah I would not know how to navigate a file structure. It's literally the, "What's a computer" effect. Outside of a downloads and desktop folder, the average user simply has no need to know how to use the file path bar. 

 

Not sure. I mean is a file cabinet hard to navigate? What about a cupboard with shelves, or a chest of drawers? Are those things not intuitive either? Seems like a basic concept, unless one managed to make it through 20+ years of life and never used these things and just keep all their stuff in a pile on the floor.

 

As someone pointed out earlier in the thread, I think it's due to abstraction. Companies try to abstract the inner workings away from the user, but that just results in the end user not knowing how things actually work (on a basic conceptual level). Which, I think, in the end, "dumbs down" everything. Sure the company, its engineers and developers know how it all works. But some purposefully try to lock it down and obfuscate it (hello smartphone).

 

Try doing data recovery when you don't understand the structure of a hard drive partitions, sectors, etc.

 

Easy to hose up the drive more during the recovery if one doesn't know what they are doing.

 

The cloud has abstracted a lot of things away from the end users (you don't really know where your file is actually stored... which server, what LUN, in what storage pool of the SAN or NAS?).

 

Cloud is a term used specifically because things become fuzzy as to where the resource actually resides. Sure for the most part, you don't need to know those deep internals in order to use the service. But in terms of control over my own stuff, I don't like it. Which is why I don't particularly like cloud or even the mac ecosystem of our way or no way.

 

Now the big tech companies have more control over your own data, (SaaS anyone?). Better for managing security? Maybe, but that's if you trust the vendor... and data breaches happen all the time, no company is 100% immune as the current state of technology stands. 

 

I prefer managing my own "cloud", to the extent that it's possible, for these reasons. I like options and control over my own stuff. I don't trust M$, Google, etc. They don't have my best interest at hand, but their monetary gain. Gmail might be a product, but so am I. No thanks.

[Zodiark1593]

23 minutes ago, aramini said:

  1 hour ago, Zodiark1593 said:

only learned how to navigate by spending time with Finder and File Explorer. If the scope of my experience with tech was just my phone...yeah I would not know how to navigate a file structure. It's literally the, "What's a computer" effect. 

Not sure. I mean is a file cabinet hard to navigate? What about a cupboard with shelves, or  a chest of drawers. Are those things not intuitive either? Seems like a basic concept, unless one managed to make it through 20+ years of life and never used these things and just keep all their stuff in a pile on the floor.

 

As someone pointed out earlier in the thread, I think it's due to abstraction. Companies try to abstract the inner workings away from the user, bit that results in the end user not knowing how things actually work (on a basic conceptual level). Which, I think, in the end, "dumbs down" everything. Sure the company, it's engineers and developers know how it all works. But some purposefully try to lock it down and obfuscate it (hello smartphone).

 

Try doing data recovery when you don't understand the structure of a hard drive partitions, sectors, etc.

 

Easy to hose up the drive more during the recovery if one doesn't know what they are doing.

 

The cloud has abstracted a lot of things away from the end users in terms of control as well. Which is why I don't particularly like cloud or even the mac ecosystem of our way or no way.

 

Now the company has more control over your data, (SaaS anyone?) and security, maybe, but that's if you trust the vendor.

 

I prefer managing my own "cloud" fornthese reasons. I like options and control over my own stuff. I don't trust M$, google, etc. They don't have my best interest at hand, but their monetary gain. Gmail might be a product, but so am I. No thanks.

You quoted the wrong person…

[aramini]

8 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

You quoted the wrong person…

Yeah I know, sorry, I updated it. Thanks

[12345678]

bruh I guess that's only about time to learn

 

if you grow up with a phone/socials, folders are not really something that you will ever touch; though I don't think that's restricted to gen Z

 

Btw many in my old glass, didn't know where the fuck did they save stuff, one time someone did manage to save some of their stuff over the net in each singular computer (cit one of my teachers), but neither did know how to turn on a computer...

[aramini]

11 minutes ago, 12345678 said:

 

if you grow up with a phone/socials, folders are not really something that you will ever touch; though I don't think that's restricted to gen Z

Sure, but if one is interested in tech to the extent that they are thinking of going into it as a profession, and have arrived at a CS 101 course or whatever, why wouldn't they take initiative to dig deeper into the system out of curiosity?

 

I guess there will always be the types of people who care to learn on their own and are curious, and then there will be the types of people who don't care.

 

But then, if you don't care, maybe choose another profession that you do care about or are interested in beyond a cursory understanding.

 

The ones who are interested/care more are going to be much better off in the long run.

 

If you just work at mickey D's for a check to pay the rent and don't care, I can understand that. If you are tier 1 tech support and are overwhelmed by the volume of annoying calls/people, I get it. But if you want to move to tier 3, or become a senior level developer, senior level engineer or whatever, I'd hope that one would take an interest, initiative, and would want to learn things on their own outside of class/work. Otherwise, they probably wont excel in the field and might get weeded out/fired or at least passed over for a promotion and other opportunities.

 

Just my opinion.

[12345678]

16 minutes ago, aramini said:

Sure, but if one is interested in tech to the extent that they are thinking of going into it as a profession, and have arrived at a CS 101 course or whatever, why wouldn't they take initiative to dig deeper into the system out of curiosity?

 

I guess there will always be the types of people who care to learn on their own and are curious, and then there will be the types of people who don't care.

 

But then, if you don't care, maybe choose another profession that you do care about or are interested in beyond a cursory understanding.

 

The ones who are interested/care more are going to be much better off in the long run.

 

If you just work at mickey D's for a check to pay the rent and don't care, I can understand that. If you are tier 1 tech support and are overwhelmed by the volume of annoying calls/people, I get it. But if you want to move to tier 3, or become a senior level developer, senior level engineer or whatever, I'd hope that one would take an interest, initiative, and would want to learn things on their own outside of class/work. Otherwise, they probably wont excel in the field and might get weeded out/fired or at least passed over for a promotion and other opportunities.

 

Just my opinion.

my schools were full of people that liked to jerk off, most where there for reasons like "if I finishing this school I get a good job" or because of friends, or because other stupid reasons, and didn't actually put any time into learning for themselves, and if they couldn't pass, then it was either the fault of some external cause like a bad teacher/book/too difficult or they were too stupid for it and then tried

 

grades can be faked by either copying or by teachers out of pity/sympathy let people pass, they aren't that "objective", and besides that teachings are not that much stricts

 

you can easily find people out of school, or at the last years of high school, or at unies who don't know a word in English nor don't know the Pythagorean theorem 

 

[aramini]

10 minutes ago, 12345678 said:

my schools were full of people that liked to jerk off, most where there for reasons like "if I finishing this school I get a good job" or because of friends, or because other stupid reasons, and didn't actually put any time into learning for themselves, and if they couldn't pass, then it was either the fault of some external cause like a bad teacher/book/too difficult or they were too stupid for it and then tried

 

grades can be faked by either copying or by teachers out of pity/sympathy let people pass, they aren't that "objective", and besides that teachings are not that much stricts

 

you can easily find people out of school, or at the last years of high school, or at unies who don't know a word in English nor don't know the Pythagorean theorem 

 

yeah totally. But the ones who don't actually learn the stuff aren't going to get very far and will eventually be weeded out, change careers, or find themselves stuck in a lower entry level type of position. Or worse yet, if they're good at manipulation, office politics, and have some people skills, will end up being your dickhead, clueless boss. lol

 

As you stated, this is not gen z specific.

[aramini]

On my smartphone, using duckduckgo search, I entered the search terms "what is a directory on a computer", and the first hit I got was

 

https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/d/director.htm

 

which gives a good, basic explanation/introduction (although it does have an error in the second paragraph, where it says, "It's called the "root" directory because there is nothing beneath it"... it should say, "It's called the "root" because there is nothing above it"... I reported the error to the site).

 

So why couldn't a first year CS student do the same? It took me a minute and I did it on a smartphone. So I don't see why only having experience with or having ever used a smartphone/social media should be an excuse.

 

If I can do it as a proof of concept, then why would that be so hard for anyone with even a basic curiosity to do?

 

Sorry, I have only ever worn sandals my whole life, so I can't tie my new shoes, and frankly I don't want to, and I don't want to learn how to.

 

I think it's indefensible to give someone a pass for having only ever used a smartphone. Come across a concept that you don't understand, and it's the first time you've encountered it? Why not "google" it and then ask others (professor) questions? Does your smartphone not have a browser?

 

The bigger issue this article brings to light is what seems to be the increasing lack of ability of many people to think for themselves, take initiative, and look up the information on their own. I suppose if I was a university professor, I would definitely find that alarming and cause for concern.

 

When you rely on others or big companies (who are more than willing) or the government or whoever to handle everything for you, you will eventually get to a place where you cannot do anything for yourself and become helpless and powerless as a result. This trend/attitude among people is why I find this article is just pointing out a symptom of a much more serious problem.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

When even the boomers I deal with daily on the Service Desk know what the C: drive is. 

[RoseLuck462]

Back when I was kid learning W98, my parents always chided that had to use paper hole computing and DOS.

[aramini]

2 hours ago, RoseLuck462 said:

Back when I was kid learning W98, my parents always chided that had to use paper hole computing and DOS.

That's silly. Storage media changes over time, but the directory tree hierarchy has been with us much much longer and is still with us.

 

Even long after punch cards, paper tape, magnetic tape, DOS, Win98, CDs, DVDs, etc.

 

Not sure that's an apt comparison.

 

Unless you were joking.

[aramini]

On 9/22/2021 at 11:52 PM, Spindel said:

Well already 20 years ago the talks was about moving away from the "classic" folder structure and just dump all files into one big pile to then sort and search for them by metadata tags. 

 

Looks like we might now be approaching this  

 

And no what I mentioned above is not stupid, because letting metadata dictate how it's shown is much more flexible than a folder system (at least in theory) since it allows you to reach and display files in multiple ways instead of one fixed folder system.

 

Lets say software A just dumps a bunch of files with this kind of system on your HDD. Each file still gets a metadata tag that it belongs to software A so if you want to see software As files you just sort for files from software A. I only want config files for software A, sort by only config metadata and software A etc. Also this way makes it easy to retrieve all files from software A in example when you want to remove it instead of how it is (most often) today where the files for software A is exploded on a variety of folders, in classic folder structures, outside the softwares main folder. 

(Way)TLDR: I disagree with your proposed system and here's why...

 

I personally don't like the idea of a flat system and getting away from the traditional directory/file structure. Maybe because I like to place things in specific places and name them specifically. Ask me where any file (content that I created or downloaded like a document, song, picture, pdf, etc) is located on my system and I could tell you from the drive down to the directory. But that's because I've taken the time to come up with a directory structure and folder/file naming convention that is well thought out and makes sense to me.

 

For some things, I don't think metadata is the way to go (unfortunately big companies, mobile, and web/mobile apps are pushing the move in that direction) but I dislike how everything is following the mobile paradigm  these days (Windows 8 thru 10 anyone?), even when it is not necessary, maybe just "cool". Force a huge user base to learn a new paradigm because newer users can't or don't want to learn an old paradigm that works.

 

What do you do with applications? Instead of installing them and having them reside in their own directory (Progam Files/<ProgramName>) you just throw em at the root of the drive and mix together data, executables, configs, etc? Then rely solely on metadata? What a mess that would be unless the OS vendor & application developers all agreed on some standard way and stuck to it. And assuming there were no bugs or gotchas in the search tool (Windows search anyone?). In the classic folder system, a lot of software is already bad at cleaning up after itself during an uninstall, leaving behind folders and registry entries (in Windows). And that's with direct paths to their stuff, so they should know where it resides.

 

What about name-spacing? Now it becomes even more important if everything is thrown on the root of the drive. Are all the thousands of software/app vendors going to cooperate and come up with a name-spacing convention so as to not overwrite or collide with another app vendor's config files or what not? How many apps have a file called "readme.txt", "settings.ini" or "config.ini"? (hint: thousands) Some vendors can't even be bothered to follow a standard in the current folder/file paradigm.

 

Did you know that the Windows registry was born out of an attempt to centralize all the system setting and app settings, etc. The Windows registry is an absolute mess. Before the registry, every app kept all its settings and configuration in its installation folder, which would typically be on the root of C:

 

Hey, what if you needed to have more than one version of a piece of software for some reason? Oh, right, don't make a folder, just add another hard drive or partition to the system? Oh yeah... sounds like an efficient and low cost solution to me..and every end user knows how to add a partition without hosing their partition table, right? Oh they don't understand the basic directory hierarchy... good luck understanding how to partition using gparted or Aomei or some tool like that. Good luck.

 

Wait, no, in that case, have a hybrid mix of directory and flat file system. What? So then we still have a directory structure, hmm... so what was the point of getting rid of the directory tree hierarchy structure?

 

Or do I setup multiple VMs, one for each software version that I want to run? Seems like overkill and a cumbersome way to handle it, and another (virtual) machine/OS to manage. Oh and since vdmk, vdi, vhd virtual disks are containers for virtual machines, metadata is useless there other than to find a particular VM (something that the VM software already handles for you in its interface).

 

So what's the solution there, without using folders to logically separate the installations?

 

Microsoft themselves changed Users (Win2K) to Documents and Settings (WinXP) and then back to Users (Win7), which is the purpose of those symlinks/junctions that you don't have permission to open in your "Users" folder (Local Settings, Cookies, My Documents, Application Data, SendTo, Start Menu, etc.). Those are there for backwards compatiblity with older software written for previous Windows versions (XP). They often don't even follow their own imposed standards or they change things on a whim and have to create workarounds like that so that their own stuff works.

 

And what about older or legacy software? Because all apps that don't use your metadata paradigm are now going to be considered "legacy" software. Throw out thousands of dollars worth of software simply to convert to some other system based on metadata on someone else's whim?

 

What about stand alone software I've purchased and acquired over the years simply to avoid Software As A Service (SaaS) monthly rental fee/access, lest I decide I don't want to pay for the service anymore, but then can't access my existing files if I cancel my subscription?

 

I guess there would be money in starting up a new software company to write an app to convert your old apps/app data to the new metadata paradigm and migrate it all to the new pile of files paradigm. Hope there's no bugs in that either. Again, no thanks. Or at least wait until FlatSoft's "Migrate-To-Meta" 10.0 is released.

 

Let the app handle all the metadata? Shouldn't that be the job/purpose of the OS? I mean that's the purpose of the OS, to handle the file system, directory structure, files, drivers, system resources, copy-read-write-delete operations, file permissions functionality. Or do we get rid of the concept of the OS all together? Or just make everything like Chrome OS where the OS is basically a fancy browser? There's a reason I don't want a Chromebook.

 

Wait, isn't the absolute path to the file part of some metadata stored somewhere? Or stored in the registry in the case of Windows. Your proposition doesn't necessarily require throwing out the directory structure.Couldn't the folder name and file name be used as some type of metadata? The whole purpose of the directory structure is for organization for human users. Other than the OS and apps to an extent, you can organize your data folders however you want.

 

Mobile devices are typically single user, where everyone has their own device and uses one account.

 

What about a multi-user system? All of your files on the root where everyone will at least need read access (or at least "list" permission if not "read file contents" permission). How do you handle privacy/security? Everyone just gets a separate encrypted drive or partition? How is that better or different than using a separate user folder? (which works great for that). Rather than set permissions on a top level directory and check a box to apply to child objects, now you have to set permissions on every single file? It's easier to just set permissions on a folder/directory level. I suppose you could script that too. An app that handles that, scripted and based on metadata? Thousands of files? I hope your script is 100% correct and bug free and accounts for every possible thing that could go wrong there. Easier to write a script that sets the permission of every file in some folder. Set permissions <somefolder>/* (pseudo code). I guess you could base it on file extensions, but now you have to consider the owner of the file. Ok so every .html file where the owner is <some user> .

 

It seems the more I think about it, the more such a proposal seems to totally expose one's lack of understanding of the OS and it's purpose, and the directory structure and it's purpose.

 

What about things like web servers? Throw all your configs, security settings, server daemons, html, media, etc all in one big drive? Sounds like a proposed mess and possible security issue just waiting to happen. Why do they recommend putting the configs in a separate directory than the www root? Here's why: Security!

 

What if there's a bug in the web server or a web server extension (php, python, etc.) or a misconfiguration that exposes all your files to the web? (this has happened in the past).

 

No I am not just stuck on the old way for the sake of it. Many teams of people, over many years, designed the systems and ways of doing things that are currently in use and highly prevalent and work well for the most part.

 

One guy is not likely to make such a system work. It would take a lot of thought, planning, and teams of people to implement it well, over a period of time. And of course things would break (bugs, backwards compatibility, etc) along the way over the course of moving to that "new" paradigm.

 

Moving in some direction just because it seems cool or like the hot new thing to do or fits someone's very specific use case and appeases their whim or whatever seems like a bad idea to me if it wasn't well thought out and well planned out. Do you have any idea how many large enterprise systems still have massive legacy systems or are heavily invested in a particular vendor? I'm sure they want to spend millions if not billions to switch over to your proposed system when their current system is working just fine, just because. Good luck selling it to their IT department, CTO, or Accounting. Do you know how many pre-existing web sites a flat system would break? Millions and billions of sites with wwwroot and subdirectories. Oh and bye bye VPS (virtual private servers/shared hosting), now they gotta partition all the drives to separate the users, if directories go away. What impact on the cost of services does that have? There's some labor involved there for someone. Even if that someone or a team of someones has to automate it.

 

Break a tried and true system that works, simply because understanding it is you know, just too difficult for some people to grasp. Using a file cabinet analogy, I could teach my 10yr old niece how a directory/file structure works in 10 minutes.

 

But no, lets abstract it even more and dumb it down for the average user and alienate and frustrate power users, designers, developers, techie types even more. Great!

 

Is it too hard to click through a few folder levels or to make a shortcut or symlink to a folder or file you commonly use? Or simply store a folder on your desktop? Having to search through a massive sea of bs just to open a word doc or something would be very frustrating to me when I could quickly drill down to a directory that I use all the time and have the full path committed to memory. You know you don't HAVE to have a complicated deep tree of directories, right? You can flatten it out some.

 

But then also, I tend to make my own folders for things and don't use or rely on abstraction like "Libraries", "My Documents", "My Videos", "My Music", "My Pictures", etc. In fact, I keep my data on a separate drive and have my own Music, Videos, Documents, etc folders at the root. I move the Users folder to this drive as well.

 

This separation of data from the OS makes re-installing a corrupt OS or whatever easier as the data drive is separate, I don't have to move a bunch of files off just to do a clean reinstall.

 

Doing a massive data migration? How to know what is part of the OS and what is the user data/content? Manually go through a giant sea of folder-less files? Or just transfer it all including application and OS files you don't need to migrate (which would just add to the size of the data transfer) I wouldn't want to be the guy tasked with such a migration, or be the guy tasked with scripting or writing a program to do that. Or now the OS has to get onboard and add metadata to all of its files as well so that backup or data migration software can do its job (what if I only want to backup data and not OS to save space on my backup storage?).

 

I suppose you could just have multiple drives or partitions (one for the OS, one for applications and one for user data) but what about the people who don't understand the concept of a drive? Oh wait, so now instead of a logical hierarchy directory trees/file structure, we are using a physical disk as the hierarchy structure. So we flattened it out a bit, but now need multiple drives to have at least some structure and separation of concerns.

 

Oh and by the way, ever use Linux/Unix/FreeBSD (which MacOS is based on)? In the old days, people would partition their disk for all the various /root, /var, /dev, /etc, /log, /dev, /home, /usr directories. Almost 1 partition per directory. Wait, so that concept of using separate drives or partitions...yeah nothing "new".

 

Jailbreak your iPhone or root your Android phone and install a file manager. You will see that even smartphones and tablets have some sort of directory tree hierarchy structure.

 

Abstraction makes sense in certain areas, like VMs where the actual hardware and drivers are abstracted away from the guest OS by means of a hypervisor. Or JVM and J.I.T. compilation, to aid in cross-platform compatibility. Or the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) of the OS to separate kernel/real mode from user mode/user space. Manufacturers also use abstraction and hypervisors in an attempt to lock you out of messing with the hardware (Sony PlayStation 3...  the OS was based on Linux, Yellow Dog Linux, I think. Guess what, it has a directory hierarchy structure). I'm not sure if you are aware of just how prevalent that directory structure hierarchy is in modern computing.

 

I don't like what you are proposing because I understand how to use a file/folder hierarchy and your way seems more frustrating to me as a local end user of traditional, standalone applications who avoids cloud based solutions whenever and where ever possible.

 

I'm sure it might make sense for parsing and presenting big data, as there could be petabytes, exabytes, or zettabytes of data to deal with.

 

For a home desktop or laptop system, as a way to dumb it down for lazy users who don't want to learn anything as simple as a folder/directory structure system... methinks not.

 

Catering to the lowest common denominator because they can't be bothered to learn anything... I hate that. That's what got us to WinXP and then eventually Windows 8/8.1/10. Although it cuts down on support calls for basic things (saves companies money) I suppose... maybe. But where does it all stop? All this making everything over-simplified and Fisher Price-esque on the front end so that even your dog or "Even a caveman can do it" (Geico insurance anyone?).

 

Ever open Samsung Music or similar app and scroll through lots and lots of songs or albums to get to the song you want. It's a pain. Yeah just search on the song name or whatever, but then I am 100% reliant on the search feature of the app and that it is bug free and is giving me the results that I want.

 

What about file corruption, or if the metadata gets corrupted? Store everything in some database? Great more data to manage or send to the cloud or have telemetry take care of it for me. No thanks.

 

Ever watch a YouTube video that you arrived at through the "Suggested For You" feature (not a direct search) and not save a link, bookmark or share it at that particular moment in time. Only to go back a few days later and try to find it to share it with someone, but now you cannot easily find it due to all the crap on YouTube and you can't remember how you got there the other day, or what exact search term to use as you can't remember the exact video title? It's maddening!

 

So now I need to become an expert on searching as opposed to just learning a file system structure (which I can manipulate to a degree to suit my needs) and drilling down to a file on a system that I setup and know where almost everything resides.

 

What's the big difference between initially naming or renaming a file with a name that is sane and descriptive in the first place as you save it or download it (yes do it now, it takes seconds and let's be honest, you aren't going to go back and do it later and will end up with a shit-ton of files to go through with random filenames that the web server used that made sense to the site you got it from but may not make a damn bit of sense to you) than entering descriptive metadata?. Ever download a jpeg with a default filename that was very cryptic? Using search terms to find it, you still have to remember the filename or some key search term to find it. But remembering the directory path where you saved it... nope... way too hard. Wait, you created the folder, right? Can't remember? Hopefully the well thought out, highly organized directory naming convention that you used to tailor the system to your needs/way of thinking can clue you in. Everything in a big pile but can't remember the filename or appropriate metadata search term? Good luck sifting through thousands of files by hand or finding it via lots of trial and error searches.

 

Wait, I used the search feature on my flat pile-of-files system, but is my file on C (or sda in *nix) or D (or sdb in *nix) or E (or sdc in *nix)... dammit... it's just too hard! What is a C or a D or an E drive anyways? What is a hard drive. What is sda, sdb, sdc, etc? What is a mount point? Arrrgh! I give up, it's just toooo damn difficult to comprehend! Hey Google! Help!...Siri...are you there? Alexa?? Anyone (but Bixby)?

 

I think you are thinking very narrowly in regards to how YOU use a system and would like to force this on everyone else? Flexible for you maybe. Flexible for parsing and presenting certain data, but not for everyone else's use case. Not everyone wants Apple's "our way or no way" inflexible (as in customization) approach. I bought the hardware and possibly the software (if it isn't F.O.S.S.), and I want to use it how I want to use it, not how you or anyone else wants to force me to use it because the older paradigm doesn't make sense to you.

 

Why do you think there are multiple flavors if Linux, and a gazillion different distros? Projects fork due to reasons such as some difference in design philosophy to reasons like some subgroup of the project developers not liking some specific aspect or direction the project is going and wants to go their own way (Fleetwood Mac anyone? Let me metadata search that, what was the name of that song? I just had it on the tip of my...). Open source is great for the Burger King..."Have it your way" approach as opposed to the Apple, "do it our way... ONLY!" or Microsoft's somewhere in between approach.

 

Not arguing with you (yes there is a lot of sarcasm here) just pointing out some issues I can foresee with your proposed system. Things that often seem like simple solutions on the surface of it, often entail more complexity, thought, and planning than one initially thought once they get into the deep details of it (the devil is in the details).

 

Whether the complexity is on the front end user interface or abstracted to the back end, behind the scenes, the complexity still exists somewhere, for someone (end users, or system developers, or system maintainers).

 

Maybe there's a reason they've talked about it for 20yrs but still have not implemented it on a wide scale. Rather there is a hybrid sort of system (music, photos, videos, pdf, word docs, etc are all data types that can and do currently have metadata) but they still haven't got rid of the directory/file structure. Why is that? Could it be that, greater minds than me, haven't agreed upon how to handle some of the issues I bring up?

 

As for me, I hate unknown "black boxes" where I don't have much control over it, or can't get to the bottom of how it works. I hate unnecessary abstraction.

[Bramimond]

8 hours ago, aramini said:

On my smartphone, using duckduckgo search, I entered the search terms "what is a directory on a computer"

How long did it take you from zero knowledge to navigating this directory, though?

Of course this can be easily learned if you get a couple of minutes, but in the context of a class you don't always have these couple of minutes, since you are supposed to do something else in the time allotted for class. And this approach also expects everyone to know what they are searching for. If someone just told you "go to /opt/project/work/" you'd still have no idea that you are lacking knowledge about directories, which makes researching it take longer. If it takes you ten minutes, that are ten minutes you are behind in class. 

10 hours ago, aramini said:

 

Companies try to abstract the inner workings away from the user, but that just results in the end user not knowing how things actually work (on a basic conceptual level). Which, I think, in the end, "dumbs down" everything.

It has been coined "The War on General Purpose Computing™" about a decade ago. Smartphones are pretty much the greatest success in this ongoing onesided war.

[aramini]

15 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

Of course this can be easily learned if you get a couple of minutes, but in the context of a class you don't always have these couple of minutes, since you are supposed to do something else in the time allotted for class. And this approach also expects everyone to know what they are searching for. If someone just told you "go to /opt/project/work/" you'd still have no idea that you are lacking knowledge about directories, which makes researching it take longer. If it takes you ten minutes, that are ten minutes you are behind in class. 

What ever happened to the idea of reading ahead, before class? So, you know, you can get more out of the class. Or if you're totally lost, you can't take 1 minute during or after class? Or you can't ask a question like "what is /opt/project/work/"? Maybe others are clueless too and would benefit from the question. The point of a class/school is to learn in a hopefully safe environment so that when you get out in the field/workforce you are comfortable with the subject (but will still have to learn things). And so mow we have to teach people how to search the web too? Fine. Where does it end though?

 

And if you don't take any minutes to figure it out or learn it or ask a question, whether before, during or after class, you will ALWAYS be behind in class. ALWAYS! Especially if it is something you will struggle with throughout the duration of the class (semester) if you don't just learn it/address it upfront as needed. Sorry, nothing personal, but I ain't buying your reasoning there. Sounds more like an excuse not to do something.

[Bramimond]

10 minutes ago, aramini said:

What ever happened to the idea of reading ahead, before class? So, you know, you can get more out of the class. Or if you're totally lost, you can't take 1 minute during or after class? 

How are you supposed to learn something beforehand if you don't know it exists? If you are told to go to /opt/project/work to do something and you have no concept of what that is, then how are you supposed to figure this out in one minute? Your best bet is to just ask the instructor.

 

Obviously learning this is easy, there's nothing you can't learn. The important part is that this is something that people don't just know without having to learn it for class.

It is no longer general knowledge. 

[aramini]

48 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

How are you supposed to learn something beforehand if you don't know it exists? If you are told to go to /opt/project/work to do something and you have no concept of what that is, then how are you supposed to figure this out in one minute? Your best bet is to just ask the instructor.

So are you working from some kind of book or electronic material like a PDF, web doc or curricula/handout that the instructor provided on day 1? What is the context of the class? Are you using some software? Googling "how to use <insert software name here> wouldn't at least bring up a YouTube video or tutorial on the software? C'mon, really? I'd imagine that "/opt/project/work" is some kind of workspace for a project and probably the default path, so therefore probably discussed in some online tutorial for the software. But again, this is what I mean when I say people have not learned how to think for themselves. Which is scarier to me than not understanding a concept they could ask the professor, a TA or a classmate next to them about. Learning requires humility. I wouldn't be afraid to ask lest I feel stupid. It would be a valid question if it was that essential to performing tasks in the class. Also sounds like the professor is not that good or thorough if it is something highly specific to that class that you really need to know in order to proceed with the task. In intro level classes, they would expect a lot of lack of knowledge about certain things. In more advanced courses, they will expect/assume you already know certain things. College is not necessarily supposed to be easy, and unlike high school, you are going to have to learn some stuff on your own. When you get into the workforce, the employer is not going to hold your hand through everything. And if they feel they have to, you will either be assigned a mentor (in a good company) or given the boot.

 

48 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

Obviously learning this is easy, there's nothing you can't learn. The important part is that this is something that people don't just know without having to learn it for class.

It is no longer general knowledge. 

Yeah again, the more studious and efficient students will read the material ahead of time, usually so they can ask better questions because they are not being exposed to the to material for the first time in class, but read ahead of time. The best way to not get behind, is to get ahead. But I understand that sometimes this is not always feasible. Life events prevent this or perhaps certain types of students don't want to sacrifice partying or some social function for a brief period in their life to, you know, focus on learning. Which I thought was the point of school. Or is the point just to get a degree to get the job to get the money?. The lazier ones will procrastinate. If I was paying $100K to get a degree (I understand that college is expensive these days) I'd want to get the most out of it for my money. It is often said that people who go back to school in their 30's or whatever, often get more out of it because they are more mature and have a better appreciation for education, and are probably having to pay for it out of pocket or via loans (not on mommy and daddy's dime).

 

It is sad but true that it is no longer general knowledge.

[LAwLz]

13 hours ago, aramini said:

I do think, however, that there is a huge difference between knowing the basic principles and concepts of how things work versus knowing every fine detail of how everything works.

But where do you draw the line between "basic principles" and "every fine detail"?

If I had to guess, I'd say that most people in this thread don't know how a switch or router makes decisions on how to send network traffic. I would say that's "basic principles of how a network works".

If your idea of a processor is "it computes stuff" then I'd say that's on the same level as someone saying "storage works by storing things" without knowing basic file hierarchy structure. 

 

Again, you can't just say "everything I know is basic principles so you really should know as much as I do, but anything I don't know is just fine details that you don't really need to know".

Who is to say that knowing the structure of a file system isn't "fine details"? Who is to say that not knowing how a MAC-address table looks and how it works isn't "basic principles of switching"?

 

 

If you ask me, knowing how the hierarchical file structure system of a computer looks like and how it works, is just as "basic" knowledge as knowing how a switch stores and updates information in its MAC address table.

You only separate the two as "basic knowledge" and "fine detail" because you know one of those things and not the other.

[aramini]

6 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Again, you can't just say "everything I know is basic principles so you really should know as much as I do, but anything I don't know is just fine details that you don't really need to know".

Who is to say that knowing the structure of a file system isn't "fine details"? Who is to say that not knowing how a MAC-address table looks and how it works isn't "basic principles of switching"?

That wasn't my point at all. Basic concepts... the motor or engine of a vehicle creates power and it is transferred to the axles/wheels via a transmission and differential gear. Basic concept, no deep nitty gritty details there. Detailed knowledge.. pistons, o-rings, compression, ignition of the gas via spark plugs, distributor, carburetor or Electronic Fuel Injection system, etc.

 

Knowing that a router handles the routing of network traffic, basic concept. Concept of a packet, basic concept. Dirty details of the implementation, fine details. Is it really that hard to distinguish between the 2?

 

It seems pretty objective. This is not art or literature where things are subjective.

[LAwLz]

3 minutes ago, aramini said:

That wasn't my point at all. Basic concepts... the motor or engine of a vehicle creates power and it is transferred to the wheels via a transmission nd differential. Basic concept, no deep nitty gritty details there. Detailed knowledge.. pistons, o-rings, compression, ignition of the gas via spark plugs, distributor, carburetor or Electronic Fuel Injection system.

 

Knowing that a router handles the routing of network traffic, basic concept. Concept of a packet, basic concept. Dirty details of the implementation, fine details. Is it really that hard? It seems pretty objective. This is not art or literature where things are subjective.

Okay, and by that logic "the phone stores data on itself" is the basic concept of file storage. How the files are structured in relation to each other in the file system are the "dirty details of the implementation".

 

If I had to guess, those students that asked about the file system understands that the 128GB iPhone can't save as much data on it as the 256GB version. So they clearly understand the basic concepts, right?

[aramini]

19 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Okay, and by that logic "the phone stores data on itself" is the basic concept of file storage. How the files are structure din relation to each other in the file system are the "dirty details of the implementation".

I am not sure if you are arguing for the sake of arguing. Ever read a wikipedia article versus a volume of books that go deep into a subject? That is what I'm talking about.

 

Basic concept = High level cursory overview, easily grasped by the average, non-expert,  lay person or a child if explained well.

 

Fine details = exactly what it sounds like... getting into the bits and bytes of it, nuances, design specifics, expert knowledge of the subject inside and out,  instead of a high level cursory overview.

 

So like what a high school student would know of physics, versus what a PhD in theoretical Physics would know. Basic conceptual knowledge vs. years and years of study of math, intricate details of atoms, subatomic particles, fine nuances and minutia you'd have to track in equations (f=ma is not the whole story), etc.

[LAwLz]

23 minutes ago, aramini said:

I am not sure if you are arguing for the sake of arguing. Ever read a wikipedia article versus a volume of books that go deep into a subject? That is what I'm talking about.

 

Basic concept = High level cursory overview, easily grasped by the average, non-expert,  lay person or a child if explained well.

 

Fine details = exactly what it sounds like... getting into the bits and bytes of it, nuances, design specifics, expert knowledge of the subject inside and out,  instead of a high level cursory overview.

 

So like what a high school student would know of physics, versus what a PhD in theoretical Physics would know. Basic conceptual knowledge vs. years and years of study of math, intricate details of atoms, subatomic particles, fine nuances and minutia you'd have to track in equations (f=ma is not the whole story), etc.

Yes, but I don't get your point. 

 

The students who struggled with understanding file hierarchy and folder structure clearly didn't think it was so easy a child would know it. So by your own definition, that's not basic knowledge. 

Maybe you only think it's easy because it's what you already know? 

 

Meanwhile, how a switch works was something we learned in like 20 minutes in the basic network course I took. So isn't that basic knowledge then? It is certainly not "expert knowledge" that requires years of studying.