Dot files are much better than hidden files on Windows (and before DOS). There you need additional attributes to hide files.
And hidden files seem to be an important thing. Some things you need to hide from the end user.
And hidden files seem to be an important thing. Some things you need to hide from the end user.
On the other hand, dotfiles convention is useful for meta/"parallel" data, `.git` being prime example - something tighly linked with abitrary file structure.
It would be so much cleaner if the convention would've bin similar to /var, /etc, and so on. ~/.var/cache or ~/.etc/