[Tiomaidh]

Many icon sets (on Linux, at least) use a picture of a hard drive instead of a floppy [1]. Which, though more correct, still worries me. Anybody who recognizes the icon as a picture of a hard drive isn't going to be confused by the concept of saving...do we need a similar icon that uses a picture of an entire computer instead? Should it be a laptop or desktop?

[1] - http://cshared.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screenshot-xam...

[andos]

Why do we still need to save explicitly?

[burgerbrain]

1) because people tend to like clicking save or pressing ctrl-s.

2) to complement save-as (aka, poor-man's branch)

[andos]

to complement save-as (aka, poor-man's branch)

Exactly. Today we use save and save-as as crippled forms of versioning. We can do better.

[burgerbrain]

Save-as also provides the function of being able to save to different media/locations. Furthermore, it is easy. Power users already have their more powerful alternatives and non-power users are used to what they know.

If it ain't broke...

[nl]

It is broke, though.

How many times have you heard someone complain they failed to save their work? It just shouldn't happen - the computer knows exactly what was inputed - why should it ever lose track of it.

The "Save" function is a carry-over from the time when storage was expensive and slow, and humans had to make decisions about what was worth saving. Now, computers generate a lot more useless logfiles that are saved forever than a human can possibly generate using a word processor, and yet we are asked to make a decision about if we really meant to put out inputs into a computer.

That shouldn't happen any more, and with good software it doesn't.

In Google Docs - for example - there is no "Save" function - it happens everytime you press a button. There is no "Save As"; instead there is "Rename..", "Make a Copy.." and "Download As.." which perform the distinct functions rather than overloading "Save As.."

[andos]

Save-as also provides the function of being able to save to different media/locations.

Yeah, that too. Duplicate, or export, or copy.

Power users already have their more powerful alternatives and non-power users are used to what they know.

What?! Why should only “power users” be allowed the luxury of never losing important data? We can make that easy too.

[burgerbrain]

I have no idea what point you are attempting to make. Non-power users don't need full-blown version control, there are plenty of more straight-forward ways of making sure users don't lose their data than that. Save-as is not mutually exclusive with automated backup systems, or undo systems.

Furthermore, nobody is forbidding them from using the tools "power-users" use. The only difference between power users and regular users is what tools they choose to use.

[Tiomaidh]

This came up elsewhere in the thread, see my response there: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2738851