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This is part of a slowly growing phenomenon.

As a professor I started noticing this general trend awhile ago, when file types starting being obscured. Students had trouble opening and moving files around because they didn't understand the concept of a filetype. They just expected to click on a file and have it open in the "correct" software. So they'd try to do that, and it would open in the wrong program, and then they'd save it, in the wrong format, and then everything would get corrupted across nesting dolls of attempting different programs to open increasingly frankenstein files.

It was confusing to me at first, but then I realized most OSs by default hide filetypes.

This stuff with cloud software, automatic saves, tags, etc was just the next step.

People complain about loss of terminal/shell UI but I do think this is all a good example of how maybe things are getting too far away from what's going on under the hood.

I wouldn't believe it either except I've had to deal with it firsthand.

You better believe it. This was exactly my experience as a TA in my College's computer science department from 2014-2018.

It's not incompetence though, as the article points out, we've moved beyond an intimate understanding of the filesystem being a prerequisite for using computers.

Using interactive browser based environments like jupyter notebooks have made needing to deal with files even less of an issue.

So how did people learn in the 80s and 90s when no one had used a computer before?

They learned because if they didn't, they couldn't do much other than loading games. Perspective is a hell of a drug.

And what of these students who need to learn for their schoolwork?

Again, if they have an alternate system which is working for them, that's great. But the article gave me the impression that alternate strategies weren't working, in STEM classes where the students need to deal with lots of data.

The file cabinet/folder/document metaphor was almost universally understood back then. How many of today's students have ever used a physical filing system?

I was taught the concept of drafting a hierchical outline [1] around 3rd or 4th grade in language arts as one of the first steps in writing a paper. Even today, this is probably the mental model I most associate with file systems. I am also fairly confident I encountered this before ever having to interact with a physical file cabinet full of manila folders. Is it still common for outlines to be taught in early grade school?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_(list)

By 3rd or 4th grade, wouldn't you have interacted with a library's card catalog or say, how your family's cassettes or cds were stored for retrieval?

I don't think the concept of hierarchies is foreign to these kids, I think it's the concept of storage of physical media.

I can only speak to my individual experiences and my admittedly fuzzy memory of things so long ago, but here goes:

"By 3rd or 4th grade, wouldn't you have interacted with a library's card catalog"

In that school's library, they had just replaced the old card catalog with a computer terminal based dewy decimal system a few years before I started. Looking at screenshots today, I'm fairly certain it was Dynix[1]. It was the early nineties, and a pretty big deal they had a computer in the school at all. In those years, the librarian was the only one trained to use the terminal, so you simply told her what you were looking for and she helped you find it. Maybe some of the older kids were taught how to use the computer, but there was serious resistance to letting us sticky handed younger kids touch it. I'm sure I had visited the local public library as well by that age, but again, I probably got assistance from parents or librarians to find things until I got older.

"or say, how your family's cassettes or cds were stored for retrieval?"

My father might have had a few audio cassettes, but VHS tapes were all I really interacted with before grade 5. A few of my family friends had walls of VHS laden bookcases in their living room, but we were not that family. The VHS tapes were bulky, but you could record over old things you had already watched so you didn’t need a lot of them. Our system of organization was more akin to shoving them all in the largest drawer in the living room. If anything, my family’s approach to media storage would have encouraged the “all in one bucket” approach that so many of the students in the article seem to favor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynix_(software)

> It's not incompetence though

Or is it?

The concept of organizing things hierarchically is not unique to file systems. People were doing it long before computers even existed.

Yes, but it's possible this generation has never done it. They've never used a paper-dominant system, never used a file cabinet or a physical folder. The metaphor falls apart when the source is no longer well-understood.

I doubt many have used a full filing cabinet, but I'd assume most have used physical folders.

I'm actually a student teacher in an elementary school right now (very beginning of my training, so I'm mostly just observing). The third graders have brightly-colored folders for math, writing, science, etc, which they keep in their desks and/or backpack.

Well, bang goes that theory. Maybe it's the intangibility of computer files that is tripping them up.

You don't only do it with file cabinets and paper. That was the entire point I was making.

You organize day-to-day physical items the same way. "My personal stuff" goes into my bedroom. My underwear go into an underwear drawer. My jeans go into a different one. Anything that I want free of wrinkles is hung in a closet.

Geography and space are hierarchical. Earth is in the solar system. North America is in the northern hemisphere, but Australia isn't. The United States and Canada are in North America. Nevada is in the United States. You get the idea.

Most organizations of people are hierarchical. Militaries, companies, volunteer organizations, the government.

Whether or not you have physically organized papers is irrelvant. It's a concept that is fundamental to existence. Extending it to files on a computer should not be terribly difficult for someone seeking a college education.

Good points. Maybe educators need to consider updating their metaphors -- any of these could work. The real problem might be that computer files are intangible, abstract entities, making it harder for students to fully grok the model.

> Good points. Maybe educators need to consider updating their metaphors -- any of these could work.

Why do you assume that educators are at fault for the lack of understanding? It seems you are willing to make any excuse for students failing to grasp a straightforward concept that is present in everyones' lives from childhood onward.

> The real problem might be that computer files are intangible, abstract entities, making it harder for students to fully grok the model.

The real problem might be that they just aren't college material.

>The people who bought Macintosh computers in the 90s didn't grow up with these concepts either, and they seemed to get the hang of it relatively quickly.

This web based Macintosh emulator[1] says otherwise... on startup, it opens a folder, and "Macintosh HD" is sitting right there in the upper right corner.

1 - http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/

Exactly, the Macintosh used files! Sorry, that sentence was ambiguous—what I meant was, the adults who bought Macs in the 80s and 90s hadn't used files previously, because computers by-and-large didn't exist. They still got the hang of it on their Macs.

(If you meant something else with your example, and I'm still misunderstanding you, sorry!)

No, but they did use physical files, and physical folders. Of course these students probably have also ( kids still use paper right? For notes at least ? )

But you (generally) don't recursively put your physical folder inside another folder.

Did you do that with filing cabinets in the 80s?

Yes, you had your filing cabinet, with sections in the drawer that was like a big folder that mounted on the rails, one per customer, then you had individual files inside of that, one per project, maybe even 2 levels of that, then the actual pages of paper.

I'm wondering if the issue is similar to having GPS and never having to learn the streets of the city you live in. If you can simply type the name of the file you need into the Start menu/Spotlight, why bother going through folders?

Yes, it is similar. Since kids these days aren't allowed to go outside and play, they are driven everywhere. I noticed that my child had zero sense of which way home was, so I started playing a game. Stop at a random corner (with no traffic behind me), and as "which way is home?". It took a while, but now I get good answers all the time.

I myself purchased a road atlas a few years ago, for getting to unfamiliar suburbs on the other side of Chicago. The main use I have for google maps is traffic information.

I think that's a good analogy. Not only do many kids today not know how to read a map or find their way around without their phone, but when their job is delivering packages and the app steers them to the wrong house they won't look at the physical address marker on the house and sometimes will even argue with the resident and suggest it's the resident who is in the wrong place.

They cannot navigate without the computer, and they trust the computer more than they trust physical reality.