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Computer Files Are Going Extinct

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Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#151

Post by derefr »

scarface74 wrote: post #127
dreamcompiler wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never mentioned music. I was talking about files in general. And even with music it was easy to drag music files from an iPod; they were merely in a hidden folder. I don't remember trying to drag music to an iPod with the Finder because it used to be so easy to do that with iTunes.

Yes you could always drag music from the iPod, but you never had anyway of knowing which song was which because all of the names were changed to a random filename.

The files kept their embedded ID3 tags, so if you had tagged them correctly in iTunes, you could use an ID3 tagger's "tag to filename" conversion to name the files.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#153

Post by the_pwner224 »

jkp56 wrote: post #140
esotericn wrote: post #86

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…

We'd call this karma, I think. On the one hand these big corps create siloed software environments that not only take all control away from users, but also remove the necessity to think. From their pov, users are as dumb as rocks and should stay at that level. At the same time the same corps cry about the lack of supply of new engineers and pretend to promote CS in college (by giving out ipads and watching a colorful…

> pretend to promote CS in college

Potentially because that means in 5-20 years they'll have a much bigger pool of labor available? They've already done illegal market-manipulating collusion which resulted in billions of dollars of salaries not being paid: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19666545 ; in the end they got hit with fines for a few million bucks and some developers got a paycheck for a few thousand bucks (two orders of magnitude less than the wages stolen from them).

I'm just a college student, but I find it hard to not think that when I see the big companies spending tons of money to push people to learn to code.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#154

Post by drdeadringer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #125
htfu wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that an argument for abstracting that kinda back-and-forth away rather than against it? As it stands, if it’s in the cloud and not on your device there’s an indicator. Try to open it and it downloads. Edit it and the changes get synced back up. Unless something is edited in multiple places while offline, or someone takes your lead and tries to manually manage copying stuff back and forth, there’s no different l…

GP is trying to say that data is no longer in a form independent from the application you last used on it. There are whole categories of stuff you can't do with this approach, because every application now becomes a minimal file manager itself, just to avoid the "confusing" idea that data can live independently from applications.

Yes exactly, and thank you.

Imagine if you edited a photo in Photoshop and could only access that edited photo through "Photoshop Live" or some-such.

File management in the wild is dirty. Either "there is only one" or there is the Clone Wars.

This is real. For anecdotal example, a family member had this issue with Picasa [before it was purchased by Google]. "I rotated and cropped thousands of my pictures, but when I look at them in my 'Pictures' folder my edits aren't there. Where are my edits? Why aren't my edits in Picasa in my 'Pictures' folder pictures?"

I'm ok being called a pedantic purist on this type of thing. If you want my help, I need to know what you are talking about. Show me your file. If all I am possibly able to see is not what you want, one of us is in trouble.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#155

Post by detaro »

psilocipher wrote: post #146
buckminster wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High end databases are often run directly on block storage. The db already manages allocation and caching so a filesystem just adds overhead and wonky semantics.

And therefore files will eventually go extinct?

And therefore your nitpick that a database will consist of files is wrong. (not to mention that the article is not about files as an implementation detail, but as files about a user interface)

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#156

Post by jkp56 »

carapace wrote: post #45

Files and directories are not a great abstraction. Never have been. E.g. the insides of git are much better (although the abstractions layered on top are fucking gruesome.) Something like IPFS is an obvious way forward. https://ipfs.io/

And ipfs is really just a combo of the two concepts: files and folders wrapped into a git-like tree of hashes; and all that tree-hash-files-folders structure is being synced over a torrent-like protocol.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#157

Post by derefr »

tomc1985 wrote: post #115
scarface74 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the sentiment, it’s a few years out of date. Starting with iOS 8 - 5 years ago, Apple has had extensibility points where third parties like Dropbox and OneDrive could be used to store documents and used in the common places where you would want to save and upload files across apps. - of course the Files app was introduced two years ago. - there have been third party document providers that exposed…

Files still doesn't have the concept of a 'home folder' on the local device. I heard they even had this feature in early betas but took it away.

You mean the "On My [device]" folder, as referred to here? https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT206481

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#158

Post by unqueued »

greggman2 wrote: post #138
unqueued wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that technology will be more streamlined as it becomes more widely adopted. But people still understand that they need to put gas in their car to make their car go, and if they run out of gas, their car can not go. We don't have to know what gas is, but it is still a quantity of something. But our concept of files and data is becoming so abstracted that we do not even know where our data is anymore, how much…

Maybe we'll get there. They'll put induction coils in the streets and electric cars will charge and get powered as they go. Unless you're going on a long trip there'd be no need to ever worry about power. Or, simpler, wireless powering in most parking spaces so for most people never even having to think about power Or, robot chargers. Put a QR code on your plug, maybe in infrared so it's invisible, and some simple de…

> Maybe we'll get there. They'll put induction coils in the streets and electric cars will charge and get powered as they go. Unless you're going on a long trip there'd be no need to ever worry about power.

I think that is a bit optimistic though. It would be far more obtuse than that. You'll have to subscribe to one of a several charging services, that sort of work with each other most of the time. And you won't be able to inspect for yourself how much voltage your car has left without jailbreaking it.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#159

Post by nostrademons »

perl4ever wrote: post #144
nostrademons wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People used to need to understand that the gas went through a carburetor, where it was mixed with air that came through an air filter, both of which could get clogged. And then it would be drawn into a cylinder through a valve that was opened by a camshaft, where it would be ignited by a sparkplug. Sparkplugs could get dirty, so you better know how to change them yourself. And it'd be very bad if the sparkplug was li…

Also, I learned how to change a tire very early. From what I read, a large number of people can't do that these days. But spark plugs and air filters are still a thing.

My dad taught me parts of an engine, along with how to service them, when I was in elementary school (mid-80s). I was on a big "learn how cars work" kick at the time, so he figured he'd indulge me and maybe teach a few practical skills at the same time.

I've owned my car for 10 years now, and the total number of times I have had to change my oil, air filter, spark plug, or any other part of the engine is zero. My A1 service indicator comes on and I take it to the dealer, where they relieve me of a large amount of money and give me a car back that drives okay and has no maintenance lights on. I did have to change a tire once and jumpstart a car once, but that's about the extent of car maintenance I've needed.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#160

Post by Someone »

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…

”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.”

As others said, that’s because they don’t need to do that.

In my experience, they will know how to share their Google Docs (which is where their spreadsheets and typed reports in all likelihood get written) with you.

They probably also will understand that editing said documents after informing you of their existence may not mean you’ll see said changes.

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