[quotemstr]

The XDG specification (https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/) is

  1. short and easy to read,

  2. good for users, and

  3. can be implemented in five minutes.

If we can't have programs follow this simple decades-old convention, we have no hope whatsoever of voluntary consistency in our computing world. It's literally because of the mentality espoused in this article that we can't have nice things.

Unfortunately, we have nothing but social pressure and incensed HN comments to get developers to follow it. That's why the mobile world adopted a "you shall" model: a developer won't spent five minutes to save a million years of user time unless there's some social or technical guardrail forcing his hand.