[danpalmer]

In what way?

My gut feeling is that most people mostly like their documents just being everywhere and being accessible everywhere. Office 365 storing things in the cloud, that's pretty much the case, you don't really need to understand where a file is (it's "in Office") or how to move them. Another bonus is not having to worry about what's been deleted. It's only based on anecdotes, but I suspect this is a lot more important to people than most other aspects of the software.

[salawat]

Yeah... No. Not gromking filesystem location is creating an entire generation of computer users illiterate in basic computing concepts, or even being capable of mapping through technical abstractions to answer silly things like "where are the bits you desire now?"

This is not a good thing at all, as it's creating a form of indoctrination to learned helplessness that isn't easy to get past. At least nowhere near as easy as it was in the past.

[danpalmer]

You're right that it creates that, however it's the "better UX" of not having a filesystem that leads to the use of those features, which leads to users not practising the skills, which leads to that "illiteracy".

While I personally think a filesystem has great UX for my purposes, never accidentally losing a file is a much better UX for most people. As much as it causes friction to not have these basic computer skills now, I suspect it's less "illiteracy" and more _progress_. We don't criticise people for not knowing how to ride a horse today, because we have public transport and cars. We don't criticise computer users who can't use a 5.4" floppy drive because we have USB sticks and cloud storage.

[kcplate]

> computer users illiterate in basic computing concepts

What’s a “basic computing concept” anyway? My 4 year old granddaughter doesn’t know a bit from a byte or a file from a folder, but was able to pick up an iPad and intrinsically start using it to do far more powerful things than I would have been able to do at 4 years old on a IBM Model 370 back in the 70s