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Comment by netsharc | Hacker News Reader

The term "folder" already annoys me. It's a (filesystem) directory...

> The term "folder" already annoys me. It's a (filesystem) directory...

You don't like the metaphor of a folder, but you'll accept the metaphor of what goes into a folder?

The two metaphors are not as tightly coupled as you suggest. Even pre-computing, a "file" meant a collection of information and a "filing system" was a way of organizing it - that didn't neccesarily involve paper folders. In fact, card files, from which we ultimately derive our computer term, were more usually stored in boxes.

I too prefer the term "directory". Apart from all UNIX tools using this terminology, it also more accurately reflects what it actually is - not a physical container for information, but a list of references to it - an association of names to addresses. A paper file cannot be in more than one folder, but it can easily appear in more than one directory. On a filesystem that allows hard links, this is a more useful conceptualization.

>Apart from all UNIX tools using this terminology, it also more accurately reflects what it actually is - not a physical container for information, but a list of references to it - an association of names to addresses.

Yes, but "directory" doesn't describe the way the UI appears to behave in a way that's more intuitive to the average non-technical end user than "folder." A "directory" could also describe a map or a phone book for most people.

>"directory" doesn't describe the way the UI appears to behave

That rather begs the question though, doesn't it? To a nontechnical user, the ship has sailed - everyone calls them "folders", the icons are ubiquitously pictures of file folders, and it would be terribly confusing to try and change it now. That doesn't mean it was the right choice though. I could imagine a world where the icons were little phone books, and the concept of a hard link didn't require a half-hour explanation.

Check the comment four levels above. Apparently it is not at all intuitive that folders can be inside other folders.

I don't understand that, the folder was picked for the filing cabinet metaphor.

But in a filing cabinet system you have different cabinets, different drawers, different hanging files and various lower level arrangements - non-hanging folders (or drawer dividers), paper clips, staples.

Perhaps they never saw a filing cabinet? Or never put something in a box, then in another box?

When they put food in a cupboard do they empty it out of the current container first?

<<Your house is a drive, every room is a "folder", every container in every room is a "folder", every container inside another is a "folder", every object is a "file".>>

I've come across it, just assumed that no-one explained the metaphor to them.

> I've come across it, just assumed that no-one explained the metaphor to them.

If it was this simple, there would be no people who struggle to understand recursion. And I know of quite a few.

The places where the metaphor gets stretched can be frustrating, especially in Windows. You can put Folders on the Desktop, but there's also a "Computer" icon on the desktop which allows you to browse into other folders.. including the desktop?

Then there's your Personal folders.. which are in fact collections of other folders themselves, but appear transparently to be folders- but somewhere on the file system they are actually different folders. But without the benefit of breadcrumbs to help you keep your place in the structure, where did that file actually go?

Don't get me started on shoehorning OneDrive (or was it OneDrive for Business?) into the mix.. where'd I save that file again?

That's why my desktop is so cluttered!

>You can put Folders on the Desktop, but there's also a "Computer" icon on the desktop which allows you to browse into other folders.. including the desktop?

That's a specific failing of Windows, not something inherent to the folder metaphor, though.

It's one of those absurd things that happen when nobody pays any attention to coherence. That particular thing has driven me BATS for years.

I'm encouraged, though, that my Win10 machine here doesn't seem to continue this foolishness. WinExp used to always show the Desktop as the "root" of everything, but it doesn't now. The quick access pane shows This PC as the root, with quick links below it for Desktop, Documents, etc. It's almost like MSFT is learning.

Well, yes. Windows' implementation of the metaphor is my complaint. In its current form, they may have cleaned up the "desktop" but also made it more confusing to tell what is a special folder/collection/Library. The way it appears now, there's a "Library" called Documents, which includes a folder called Documents but may include others as well. Where am I at a given moment, not sure.

"Folder" makes perfect sense to me. At my first job, we used a paper-based filing system, and we'd sometimes put folders inside of other folders. It's perfectly legit. You wouldn't nest them 5 levels deep, but that's simply a physical limitation: you wouldn't put 100 files in one folder, either.

"Directory" I don't understand at all. The only thing I can think of is the felt letter boards at the entrance to office buildings that say "DR SMITH - OFFICE 555". Not only are those a more obscure metaphor, but I've never seen them nested even one level deep. I don't have any idea how I'm supposed to use that metaphor. "Create directory": am I creating a new building? Is my building going to have two directories in the lobby? How is one 'inside' the other?

I was completely lost on Unix until it was pointed out to me that "directory" was just its weird name for folder.

The term folder was already common in other systems, before being adopted on Windows 95.

Directory is a UNIX thing.

On AS/400 (now IBM i) there are no directories or folders, rather catalogs.

Similarly other systems also had other denominations for group of files.

Directory was a DOS thing too, if you used cmd in Win95 you'd use dir.

Yep, a concept that MS-DOS inherited from UNIX, when they added directory support on MS-DOS 2.0.

However, even UNIX later adopted the folder designation for its GUI variations.

http://toastytech.com/guis/unixpcorganize.jpg

http://toastytech.com/guis/unixpcerrors.jpg

http://toastytech.com/guis/sv411fileview2.png

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19504-01/802-5817/6i9i42q3l/inde...

There are plenty of other examples of folder use, so it isn't something that Microsoft just decided to invent for Windows 95.

I agree with the downvotes in so far as it is silly to still get upset about this (instead of silently admitting defeat), but I am 100% guilty of that folly myself.

It's highly relevant to the discussion because it illustrates just how deeply ingrained these basic UI expectations are. UI (re-)designers take note, in some cases even decades of forced retraining won't make everybody accept gratuitous change.

Me too!

However, in the Windows shell a "folder" is not necessarily a "directory" - it's just something that may contain something. Control Panel, for example.

A directory is a type of folder.

And indeed I remember that as one of the more confusing things when I've got my first win95 PC as a kid. I used amiga and some DOS before, and I knew what a directory was, but now all of the sudden there's something called a folder that seem sort of similar?! To add to the confusion the computer manuals that were written in my mother tongue used in parallel both word 'folder' and the literal translation of it. Took me a while to understand that it all means the same thing.

I suppose it's because folder sounds "less tech" maybe

However directory was also a borrowed term (and to be honest folder kinda makes more sense)

I like that folders icons on most GUIs are still that light brown Manila colour, but plain brown folders went out of style with leg warmers and mullets.

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