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Computer Files Are Going Extinct

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Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#251

Post by incompatible »

ken wrote: post #176
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…

Is it a problem that students don't know abstraction layers lower than they regularly use, or that we're collectively climbing up the abstraction ladder as the years go by? I'm a full generation older than these students, and most of my colleagues can't read or write assembly language. I've worked with programmers who have never even written a compiler, database, or central processor. I'd say we're seeing that filesy…

Well, I've been using and programming computers for decades now, but I have to admit I've never "written a compiler, database, or central processor". This is quite a high bar for computer competency, I think.

The comments about file systems are interesting, but I doubt that programming is going to get much easier just because you store your source code in database tables instead of files.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#252

Post by cookie_monsta »

pnutjam wrote: post #246
cookie_monsta wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids have been to 4 schools so far (we move around a fair bit). In each one they are expected to have a Google account which is linked to their school in some sort of G Suite arrangement. I don't know if it's a coincidence or a department policy, but Google gets them early and if you think that's bad, teachers aren't to blame - maybe schools are or possibly the education dept. Honestly I was a little surprised tha…

My kids user office 365, but the iPad requirement is my but beef.

> the iPad requirement is my but beef.

I feel your pain. At an obligatory 500 bucks a pop I would have been much happier to buy them laptops.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#253

Post by nekopa »

bcyn wrote: post #222
eecc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, we’ve been fantasizing of moving away from the file-system-as-tree abstraction since forever, wanting to embrace a metadata rich database approach. Can’t happen soon enough imho

> a metadata rich database approach Can you ELI5 what this means? Very curious to understand ideas on alternatives to the traditional file-system abstraction.

Not the guy you were asking but...

I do a lot of self-study, and I use Calibre (ebook library software) to organise my reading materials. I used it because my Linux file browser has problems displaying covers for EPUB files. (And a couple of other) I like that my reading material has lots of ways for me to organise it without creating duplicates (tags mainly) search and browse my books. Then one evening I found myself wishing I could have all my other relevant 'files' in the same system: audio, video, source code, repos, blogs, podcasts, notes etc... Basically a metadata rich database - except not really a database in my case as I need to pull in 'stuff' from all over the place, and not only on one device.

Files are nice, and I hate anything that takes away my ability to organise stuff on a physical level (which, truth be told Calibre stubbornly refuses to let you set up your folder system, so I cheat by using tags) but at the same time, the problem with the skeuomorphic paradigm of files and folder is that there are so many more options open in the digital world than in the real world when dealing with items.

Imagine being able to sit at your office desk and open the drawer to pull out a piece of paper. When you look at the paper it shows you some text. Rotate the paper to the left and the text disappears and a video starts playing, turn it to the right and you hear a podcast, place it on your desk and 4 more pieces of paper appear next to it - or it calls someone relevant to the info.

All possible with digital info, but not with a real piece of paper - yet.

That is the only thing I see as a real negative about files and folders - it may be limiting what we can really do with our digital world because we're stuck in a file-system metaphor created hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#254

Post by pnutjam »

derefr wrote: post #150
coldtea wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

IIRC, at first, that was just for cost/energy savings: rather than having a media-indexing daemon running on the iPod itself, they just made that media-indexing process happen in advance on your PC. And, in fact, as a single scan at import-into-library time, rather than a repeated filesystem scan to find changes. That latter choice also put a human in the loop, since you were probably interactively importing media (w…

I modified an iPod clip to use mp3's dropped on. I can't remember the utility I used. This was years ago.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#255

Post by pdonis »

derefr wrote: post #219
astrobe_ wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Filesystems are hard! Huh, no. Just show how the FAT file system works. It's still used on USB drives. Now that you have a simple model for the low level, you can gradually add complexity such as standard file operations, caching, wear-leveling, etc. You say Minio instance, I say hex editor.

I didn't say the implementation of a filesystem was hard. You can certainly communicate, as a complete standalone fact, the brute engineering perspective on what makes a particular filesystem work. Probably even in a single lesson. But the point isn't to teach students about a filesystem; the point is to teach students what files are when they don't understand why you'd even want the abstraction that "files" represen…

The answer to "why do you want files as an abstraction" is that files are the units of ownership of data. If you don't control the files that represent your data, you don't own it. You might think you do, but you don't, because someone else ultimately decides the fate of those files.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#256

Post by Felz »

antaviana wrote: post #226
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…

My hairdresser, who knew I was into computers, once asked me “when I delete a picture on my mobile phone, where does it go?”. I first thought he was asking if there was some kind of Recycle Bin on Android, but then he said: “when we die, our body is burier or burned, that is it becomes bones or ashes, but what happens with the picture on the mobile phone, what does it become?”

The real answer is actually the same in both cases: the bits (atoms) get used for something else. Although bones can linger for quite a while, not sure if there's a file parallel for that.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#258

Post by incompatible »

antaviana wrote: post #226
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…

My hairdresser, who knew I was into computers, once asked me “when I delete a picture on my mobile phone, where does it go?”. I first thought he was asking if there was some kind of Recycle Bin on Android, but then he said: “when we die, our body is burier or burned, that is it becomes bones or ashes, but what happens with the picture on the mobile phone, what does it become?”

Perhaps assure him it's not really gone, Google, Zuckerberg, the NSA, Russia et. al. still have a copy?

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#259

Post by michaelmrose »

jacobolus wrote: post #229
unqueued wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but what if you are grading papers, do you want to mark up bitmaps? People need to learn that there is more than one way to do something.

> if you are grading papers do you want to mark up bitmaps? Why not? Get a tablet with a stylus and draw your commentary directly on the image. That is the way teachers have always marked up student work, just now without a paper copy or a physical red pen. Trying to mark up documents using MS Word or Google Docs or whatever is a horrible experience in comparison.

This would be fantastically more work than typing. Text is an effective and effecient medium.

If the student can't figure out a slightly different way to accomplish a goal then they are incompetent with computers and only proficient insofar as memorizing one workflow.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#260

Post by Frost1x »

robocat wrote: post #237
perl4ever wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think vastly more people are reading and writing due to modern computer literacy, and I can't stand the way they are changing the meaning of words because they don't read books . It appears vocabulary is increasing, but people get their vocabulary from inadequate online dictionary entries and/or peers that don't read books either. So to me, because I grew up reading books, it's incredibly aggravating because it see…

I love the renaissance of language, the minting of new words and concepts, the remixing of our heritage words with new Unicode characters and the mashing of new syntax. I see it as progress - which destroys meanings as much as liberating new meanings. A word becomes a poetic palimpsest of needlessly complex layers. I am an engineer-type, I like concrete words with focused meanings, I failed English at school while ex…

I blame modern business marketing practices on the erosion of meaning in language. Words are so overloaded and defined in ways to confuse consumers and skirt legalities that it makes many terms devoid of any useful meaning.
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