<story><title>The Missing Computer Skills of High School Students</title><url>https://nullprogram.com/blog/2018/10/31/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WalterBright</author><text>I always wondered why &amp;quot;directories&amp;quot; were renamed to &amp;quot;folders&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Now, in Win7, I bring up file explorer. Click on &amp;quot;Documents&amp;quot;. It says at the top it is located in &amp;quot;Libraries -&amp;gt; Documents&amp;quot;. But that isn&amp;#x27;t where it is. It&amp;#x27;s in c:\users\name\documents&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I never understood why there are two separate file systems mapping to the same files. It&amp;#x27;s madness.</text></item><item><author>jcfrei</author><text>Files, directories and paths are such a fundamental concept, yet I am surprised how few computer users are actually familiar with them. To me it seems that most computer classes at the high school level can be divided in two groups: One which is basically a class for typists, where you learn how to type fast and how to edit documents. And then another one which directly (and often exclusively) teaches coding.&lt;p&gt;However what&amp;#x27;s often missing is a class which teaches basic computing concepts. Files and directories are just some of them. The basic von Neumann architecture (a CPU changing ram), what a program is, how the internet protocol and the domain name system work, different parts of a URL, how a frame buffer determines what is shown on the screen, how colors are encoded with RGB values, etc. These are all very interesting concepts that could be taught at the high school level. There&amp;#x27;s a lot to be learned even without going into the technical details and I am confident that these students would then find (desktop) computers much more accessible. Smartphones and their touch interfaces have been a runaway success and I think this is in part because most people never got comfortable with traditional desktop computers (and their GUIs) due to decades of misguided computer classes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SiVal</author><text>I think &amp;quot;folder&amp;quot; is a more practical name than &amp;quot;directory&amp;quot;. Group or fileset or collection, etc., would probably work, too. The problem with directory is that it is describing the implementation instead of the result.&lt;p&gt;The result you&amp;#x27;re after as an ordinary user is a container holding a group of files, not a &amp;quot;directory&amp;quot; that lets you look up a filename and be told where to go find it. As an implementation, of course, the latter is closer to what a file system &amp;quot;directory&amp;quot; really does, but that&amp;#x27;s not the most useful metaphor to present to the ordinary user.&lt;p&gt;And does a phone directory contain individual listings plus other phone directories? No, but that&amp;#x27;s what &amp;quot;directory&amp;quot; meant to most people back when the name was changed to &amp;quot;folder&amp;quot;. And the name change happened when GUIs were first created and needed icons to represent a thing to drop files into. You don&amp;#x27;t drop files into directories, you drop them into folders or file drawers or something. (Of course, my father can&amp;#x27;t stop calling a folder a &amp;quot;file&amp;quot;, because file folders were so often called &amp;quot;files&amp;quot; at the office way back when. Oh, well.)&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve called them &amp;quot;directories&amp;quot; since before the Mac existed, so the word was long ago defined in my head by the thing itself and could be called a watermelon for all the difference it would make to me, but if I look at it with a beginner&amp;#x27;s mind, &amp;quot;directory&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like a very good name.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Missing Computer Skills of High School Students</title><url>https://nullprogram.com/blog/2018/10/31/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WalterBright</author><text>I always wondered why &amp;quot;directories&amp;quot; were renamed to &amp;quot;folders&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Now, in Win7, I bring up file explorer. Click on &amp;quot;Documents&amp;quot;. It says at the top it is located in &amp;quot;Libraries -&amp;gt; Documents&amp;quot;. But that isn&amp;#x27;t where it is. It&amp;#x27;s in c:\users\name\documents&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I never understood why there are two separate file systems mapping to the same files. It&amp;#x27;s madness.</text></item><item><author>jcfrei</author><text>Files, directories and paths are such a fundamental concept, yet I am surprised how few computer users are actually familiar with them. To me it seems that most computer classes at the high school level can be divided in two groups: One which is basically a class for typists, where you learn how to type fast and how to edit documents. And then another one which directly (and often exclusively) teaches coding.&lt;p&gt;However what&amp;#x27;s often missing is a class which teaches basic computing concepts. Files and directories are just some of them. The basic von Neumann architecture (a CPU changing ram), what a program is, how the internet protocol and the domain name system work, different parts of a URL, how a frame buffer determines what is shown on the screen, how colors are encoded with RGB values, etc. These are all very interesting concepts that could be taught at the high school level. There&amp;#x27;s a lot to be learned even without going into the technical details and I am confident that these students would then find (desktop) computers much more accessible. Smartphones and their touch interfaces have been a runaway success and I think this is in part because most people never got comfortable with traditional desktop computers (and their GUIs) due to decades of misguided computer classes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rasz</author><text>Neither some people at Microsoft, as evidenced by recent 10 update delete fiasco.</text></comment>