Computer Files Are Going Extinct • Hacker News Board

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#81

Post by psaux » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

cproctor wrote: post #74

To a computer science teacher, this feels like trying to walk up a down escalator. First-year CS students (middle school or high school) with experience using Apple products don't have a concept of a filesystem. The shift to auto-saving documents also corrodes the intuition that files get stored on disk in some non-magical way. In the same way that it's now easier to teach networking and graph theory because youth ex…

They should teach them Terminal on OSX. I would expect most CS folks would need it per building code or Git. Maybe I am too disconnected, and life is now IDE.

I showed my son at a young age terminal commands to browse the filesystem. It really seems to be helping him now that he coding.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#82

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #57

lbotos wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you want to create with it, that you couldn't? My parents went from "scared of computers" to "ipad" pros, because it's really hard to break or get hacked, it doesn't get viruses they know how to force quit an app. I'm scared of iPad getting files now, because it's going to be a mess for me.

For me, files are the centre of the world, while apps come and go, companies come and go. Data is what lasts, and why it's so important to control it. I'd want to use command line tools - or UI's that are just as composable - to manipulate my files. The iPad perspective just seems completely crippled from the POV. Like a toy. Just to take an example - look at the Moon article also on the front page right now: https:/…

Apple pretty much has acknowledged that, and has been slowly introducing a file system interface over the last several years. If you haven’t looked at an iPad in awhile, you should to refresh your POV.

The obvious buildup is to when the iPad transitions to a notebook computer.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#83

Post by faanghacker » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

maliker wrote: post #26

I don't understand how people can get work done in the post-file world. Any project I've got that's more complicated than a todo list has text files, images, code, links to websites, emails, and typeset documents. The only thing that holds all that stuff, organizes it into folders, lets me edit/run it, and makes the content searchable is a filesystem. Maybe my standards for usability are too high.

That's because the post file world is designed for consumers, not producers. YouTube creators and software programmers are still using standard computers.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#84

Post by markbnj » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

unqueued wrote: post #80

cproctor wrote: post #74

To a computer science teacher, this feels like trying to walk up a down escalator. First-year CS students (middle school or high school) with experience using Apple products don't have a concept of a filesystem. The shift to auto-saving documents also corrodes the intuition that files get stored on disk in some non-magical way. In the same way that it's now easier to teach networking and graph theory because youth ex…

I have a very similar anecdote. I had a long conversation with a friend who is a high school science teacher. She told me that computer literacy has plummeted in the last ten years. She has her students go into the field and collect data in the form of photos, spreadsheets, and typed reports. She wants students to bundle these files in zip files, and email them to her. Students have no idea how to do this. Some of th…

> I have a very similar anecdote. I had a long conversation with a friend who is a high school science teacher. She told me that computer literacy has plummeted in the last ten years.

I suspect it is the same progression as any other new technology that undergoes mainstreaming. Take automobiles for example. In the early days if you owned a car you either made yourself something of an expert (and if you were an early buyer you were probably kind of an enthusiast already) or you hired one. Today outside of enthusiast circles they are just an appliance: you get in, turn it on, and go do whatever it is you need to do.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#85

Post by apostacy » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #34

The article just felt...unjustifiably alarmist to me. Most non-technical people I know cannot manage files even after decades of computing experience. I understand why many services try to abstract or simplify the concept. For example, Google or Apple is processing the crap out of your email attachment image because they know you don’t understand the idea that trying to send five 10MB photos likely will not fit in an…

20 years ago, I thought that learning the basics of a filesystem would be a staple of education. I painstakingly taught this to my non-technical relatives. It wasn't that hard. I just assumed that this stuff would start getting taught in public schools.

Instead, we've been struggling (and often failing) to dumb computers down. The fact that people still struggle with the same tasks is a testament to that.

I have lost track of the number of people who have lost precious pictures or documents because they don't understand what device they are stored on, and threw away their old iPad. By focusing on the most common case "emailing photos to grandma" we end up introducing all sorts of new problems.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#86

Post by esotericn » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

You can pry my files from my cold dead hands.

What amuses me about all of this is that it seems to just further cement software developers as magicians. Back in the day it was the Windows control panel.

Nowadays? I have direct experience with tons of people navigating cloud service settings or whatever else via endless GUIs. Just give me the filesystem. It's all a bunch of JSON configs or whatever anyway. find -name blah -execdir sed -i blah. Bosh.

Well, I'll never struggle for work at least. Perhaps this is our 'guild'...?

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#87

Post by coldtea » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #43

ACS_Solver wrote: post #12

One of my greatest culture shocks in terms of technology was around 6 years ago when I received an iPad, having no experience with Apple products. After the initial setup, the first thing I wanted was to transfer some files - TV episodes and PDFs - to the device. My first attempt was to SSH into it, only to discover that's not an option, and would require a third-party app store and jailbreak. Then I just connected t…

The original iPod was a Firewire hard drive; you could connect it to your Mac and use it as a backup volume if you wanted. Apple took all that away a long time ago, and obviously it wasn't for technical reasons. It was so Apple could control and restrict how the customer used their devices. One of the many reasons why I changed from an Apple fan to an Apple hater.

Well, Apple has introduced the ability to connect external drives to iPads (and iPhones), and added regular a file browser for them to iOS. You just need a USB-to-lighting cable now...

And while iPod could be connected as a drive via firewire, that was never the way to add/remove music there, since (for better or worse) it was never a dumb "play this folder" type player, but maintained a associated library format with metadata etc.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#88

Post by arpa » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #54

_Understated_ wrote: post #37

> all culture, raging over us, for $12.99 a month (or $15.99 for HD) as long as we keep up our payments like good economic entities. When we stop paying, we’re left with nothing. No files. The service is revoked. This is the most frightening thing for me... by far: the concept that I no longer have control of the destiny of my own shit. Mine. Stuff I created. I understand the concept of how cloud storage works: "hey,…

Out of all my data, music and video is the thing I worry about least. I'm not going to lose my business or job because Apple Music stops working or I can't see the latest Netflix series. The last thing I want to spend my time doing is managing and worrying about terabytes of media.

Well clearly you don't have a library of Alexandria. Not to claim I do, but, well, i do curate my own library, both in books and in media and I do have some stuff that isn't easy to come by: mispressed Amorphous Androgynous CDs. Early Nate Tarrant music. The Screaming Abdabs bootleg - and to me they hold value just like a family album might hold to some. It's not about money or what i do, it's about intrinsic value of culture history, and if someone flips a switch and turns the while internet off, i will still be able to dig out the old hard drives stored in the basement and show my kid Tarkovskys' Stalker or Kubricks' 2001. Hell, i'll watch them again for the 79th time...

But if you just consume it... well, that's good too. Just keep in mind not all do, and curating a media collection is gardening to some.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#89

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #35

ACS_Solver wrote: post #12

One of my greatest culture shocks in terms of technology was around 6 years ago when I received an iPad, having no experience with Apple products. After the initial setup, the first thing I wanted was to transfer some files - TV episodes and PDFs - to the device. My first attempt was to SSH into it, only to discover that's not an option, and would require a third-party app store and jailbreak. Then I just connected t…

> My first attempt was to SSH into it Come on that’s not a sensible thing to expect from a non-specialist device, is it? I’m not sure this is a reasonable criticism.

My Android tablet offers an SSH daemon, through Termux.

Mind, the filesystem access is badly crippled, but it does exist.

(And no, I'm not a fan of Android.)

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#90

Post by anaphor » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

Your database (in the context of things like blogs and so on) is a filesystem, it's just built on top of a higher level abstraction than traditional filesystems.