Comment by James_K | Hacker News Reader

Comment by James_K | Hacker News Reader

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It seems like nothing of use is gained by replacing folder names with numbers that index those names aside from making the path shorter. In a library this is useful because books have to be stored physically in order, but a computer does not have these restrictions. You could just as easily apply the same set of rules without the numbers and see similar results, with the advantage that the names of things reflect what they are. You also wouldn't have to create silly rules like "1- is always project management", because under the new system, "project management" will always be project management.

He does seem to address this at least somewhat[0], but the justification is so flimsy it's hardly worth addressing. In essence, he doesn't like alphabetical ordering because the index can change when something new is added. He would prefer new folders to be inserted at the end of the list. He is evidently unaware that folders can be sorted by creation date.

[0] https://johnnydecimal.com/10-19-concepts/11-core/11.02-areas...

> It seems like nothing of use is gained by replacing folder names with numbers

It forces you to whittle your categories down to ten (and sub categories). I would argue that in and of itself is a useful constraint.

You don't need numbers to do that.

Using numbers makes it easier.

I have invented a superior system - Johnny Binary.

It's basically the same as the described system except you are forced to categorize your files even more severely since every level of the hierarchy only allows two subcategories.

It must therefore be superior, right?

When I first started out I used Johnny Unary. I dumped all my documents into a folder called - get this - "Documents". It actually worked remarkably well for a number of years.

All of my 100+ development projects exist in a single folder. Everything is easy to find because a) I'm usually looking at half a dozen of these projects actively in any given week and 2) the others have appropriate names that I am able to recall quickly, and 3) modern search functionality is fast and user friendly.

I've tried organizing by language, target platform etc. and all I ever found was that it did exactly as described elsewhere: a) projects did not fit nearly into one category or another and b) extra clicks were required to navigate to them. It also maps to how they are organized on GitHub and various package repos, which invariably give you a single searchable list.

Adopting modern and quirky organisation systems are, IME, frequently just premature optimisation, and most data in massive amounts such as photos are best organized by organic means, e.g. photos are best organized by date.

Yeah, there was a system/OS/UI concept I came across years ago that I can't find anymore, but every document on your system is in one time-ordered stack/stream and then I guess you just have filters and such to manage random access.

Very funny but hopefully we can all see that “constraints are good” does not imply “you should be as constrained as possible”

The most useful part of the process is simply thinking about how to organize your files.

The 03.65 like naming can indeed be switched out for something with words, but I believe the best of both worlds is to make the words "unix-like", i.e. small, and explanatory.

For instance *~* 10 main directories (code, doc, vid, etc) with *~* 10 subdirectories (note, tv, movie, etc) is nice to try to fit your data into, but if one of the subdirectories has only 8 things, it's not the end of the world. This tends to work extremely well for "longer term" storage (a drive mounted beside your OS for data when 'finalized' or 'semi-finalized') but the mess of OS and everyday files isn't as appropriate for it.

I find that the numbers are really helpful when trying to find related items. Things that are topically connected sort together and can be filtered by common criteria.

I use SimpleNote a lot for JD content and put the category in the title of each note. I type a piece of the JD number in the search box and it instantly filters down to relevant notes. Sort by title sorts by topic.

I agree, these mental maps you have to create is adding extra mental overhead, which apparently the author aims to reduce... odd.

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