@cfiesler I might be misremembering but I seem to recall years ago hearing Microsoft people proudly talking about how they wanted to abolish file systems altogether, replace NTFS with a big database so that we would simply do a search for a file, or reference it directly instead of navigating folder trees.

It never happened, but we got a simulation of it on the UI level instead.

Edit: Reading the replies, it was so very very much more than I remembered!

@cfiesler I remember hearing about that. I've spent many hours trying to find photos on my phone through the filesystem browser and it always infuriated me how hard it was to find anything.

This is, of course, by design. If you make it easy to find files in the native filesystem then people won't use your app to find them.

And we can't have that, now, can we? 😤

@cfiesler As computers get more phone-like, they keep hiding the file system. They can take my file system (and my command prompt) from my cold, dead fingers.

And yes, I realize I am basically a cranky old geezer rambling on about the gold standard, and in a generation or so, we file system weirdos will be treated as such, and we will deserve it.

@cfiesler Totally matches up with my experience teaching high school students. Lots of primary schools here use tablets almost exclusively - by the time they hit high school lots of kids have no idea about mice, modifier keys, the file system etc.

It’s kinda funny that some of this manifests as kids toggling caps lock on physical keyboards for single capitals, the way they would on a tablet on screen keyboard.