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Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

blog.hyperknot.com

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Re: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

#21

Post by bulatb »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #11

> The thing is, you can only offer this feature if your app's architecture is designed from the ground up to support it. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but this makes 0 sense to me. The Save button itself must be able to save the current state. So at the very, very least you should be able to just check on a schedule what the current state is and determine if it differs from the previously saved state. There…

Autosaving means you often save a state the user didn't want to save, sometimes one they wanted not to save, erasing one they probably wanted to keep as a savepoint.

You can give them back the point-in-time or known-state recovery with manual snapshots or history tracking, but now your data system has to support that.

Re: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

#22

Post by hyperknot »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #16
hyperknot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, author here. I think it's not a good idea to auto save just at random intervals. I certainly don't want my any of my apps to auto save without me telling it to do so. Maybe I'm old fashioned in this regards. Update, answered in detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42016231

Unfortunately, the world now wants to be autosaved. One day, you might need to look at the usage pattern and AutoSave, perhaps when idle or after a set action is done (or fall back to the default timer). Otherwise, get a checkbox/radio that turns ON/OFF the options to "Autosave."

Yes, I agree, it might be a thing now.

Update, answered in detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42016231

Re: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

#23

Post by hyperknot »

donatj wrote: post #12
hyperknot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, author here. I think it's not a good idea to auto save just at random intervals. I certainly don't want my any of my apps to auto save without me telling it to do so. Maybe I'm old fashioned in this regards. Update, answered in detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42016231

Can I ask why? What is the harm in saving users work unexpectedly especially when I see a version history here? I have been working with computers for 30 years, and I would find lack of a timed autosave surprising. Autosave was common on desktop applications in the mid 1990s. See: Everything in the MS Office suite.

The simple reason is that MapHub doesn't have a Google Docs like "time-traveling" version control nor Undo implemented. Undo is _really_ complicated if you don't start your app with that in mind. So the way to work is Save, try something and if you want to revert then you just reload the page.

Of course there is the "Previous versions" feature, but it still breaks my logic of Checkpoint-Experiment-Revert cycle. But I might be alone in this and users would be happier with autosave.

Update, answered in detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42016231

Re: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

#24

Post by mikedelfino »

hyperknot wrote: post #10
donatj wrote: post #8

I don't understand why the author believes auto save would be so difficult to implement. Just automatically click the save button for the user on a one minute timer. Done. setInterval(() => { document.getElementById("save-button")?.click(); }, 60000);

Hi, author here. I think it's not a good idea to auto save just at random intervals. I certainly don't want my any of my apps to auto save without me telling it to do so. Maybe I'm old fashioned in this regards. Update, answered in detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42016231

You could implement automatic saves on each change then, instead of regular intervals. You can also have a toggle, enabled by default, I guess, so the elderlies will have the option to make it like the good old times.

Re: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

#25

Post by hyperknot »

michaelt wrote: post #19
donatj wrote: post #8

I don't understand why the author believes auto save would be so difficult to implement. Just automatically click the save button for the user on a one minute timer. Done. setInterval(() => { document.getElementById("save-button")?.click(); }, 60000);

Some traditionalist PC users use unsaved files as sort of temporary scratch space / undo buffer. For example, imagine you've got a template for a presentation. You open the template, you add/edit as needed, then you save it with a new filename. You don't want it to autosave over the template. Or you need to produce a cut-down version of an internal document to send to an external stakeholder, so you load the document…

Answered in detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42016231

Re: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

#26

Post by PaulKeeble »

Another option rather than complete rearchitecting the app is to autosave into an autosave slot. A lot of games do this to avoid the player having to choose a save name. Having many of them gives you some snapshot history every X minutes and its a reasonable trade off especially if on load you just pull the most recent save to start off again.

Re: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

#27

Post by acdha »

INTPenis wrote: post #9

I doubt it. Most school software still sends files over e-mail that you have to save as attachments, or upload your own document files. So they still learn that early, regardless of if they use it later in life.

How does that work for most people? Are they organizing the files on a traditional file system or clicking on an icon in the message to open them or picking uploads from a selector which blends cloud and and app boundaries? Based on my wife’s school and the one our son attends, a LOT of the areas which used to expose file system behavior have been removed or significantly de-emphasized.

Re: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

#28

Post by ghaff »

brainwipe wrote: post #14
INTPenis wrote: post #9

I doubt it. Most school software still sends files over e-mail that you have to save as attachments, or upload your own document files. So they still learn that early, regardless of if they use it later in life.

Not the case universally. My son's school in south-central UK does everything via Google Docs or apps specially built for distance learning. If it weren't for Minecraft mods, he'd have no concept of the file system.

Well, in Google Docs you have something that looks a lot like a hierarchical filesystem (whether someone actually creates folders or not). The fact that it's not actually a filesystem as traditionally understood is sort of irrelevant. The average filesystem user didn't know about inodes, journaling, etc. either.

Re: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

#29

Post by Tor3 »

donatj wrote: post #8

I don't understand why the author believes auto save would be so difficult to implement. Just automatically click the save button for the user on a one minute timer. Done. setInterval(() => { document.getElementById("save-button")?.click(); }, 60000);

Emacs auto-saves to a temporary file (##), it won't update your actual file until you yourself save. Can't get better than that. Never lose anything, never save a change you don't want.

Re: Is there now a generation of users who never worked with files?

#30

Post by ghaff »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #16
hyperknot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, author here. I think it's not a good idea to auto save just at random intervals. I certainly don't want my any of my apps to auto save without me telling it to do so. Maybe I'm old fashioned in this regards. Update, answered in detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42016231

Unfortunately, the world now wants to be autosaved. One day, you might need to look at the usage pattern and AutoSave, perhaps when idle or after a set action is done (or fall back to the default timer). Otherwise, get a checkbox/radio that turns ON/OFF the options to "Autosave."

I'm not sure I want to go back to a world where I could lose a few hours work because I didn't save my work incrementally. (That said, as others suggest, you want to have a way to say known good/useful checkpoints as well.)
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