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Comment by von_lohengramm | Hacker News Reader

Have you considered that there are other metrics people are optimizing for nowadays? Perhaps typeability, screen real estate, familiarity/convention, etc.? Do you really want /User Files/Bob's Files/Coding Projects/Python Projects/Bob's Cool Python Library/Source Code/Model Files/SomeObject.py?

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Path length is still a thing in MS Windows, so be careful ;)

Depends on the WinAPI used... I still use C:/src instead of C:/Users/MyUser/src for that reason when working in windows all the same though. Too many unixy utils don't leverage the apis with the longer path, not to mention not supporting the internal certificate store and proxy config.

1. Yes, I have, if you re-read my comment.

2. I don't want to fight extreme positions which I did not make. Read this:

https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html

I didn't say paths have to have spaces, etc. Just be reasonable and <<use full words in the year of our lord 2025>>.

The first shell listing starts with `cd` and `ls`, the former being run in `~`. What does that weird `~` mean? Very strange.

More seriously, their file system is still case-sensitive, and inside /Programs they have `Iptables` and `Fontconfig`, naively capitalized, but also `OpenOffice` and `HTTPD`.

Not to mention that inside each program folder are `man` and `bin` as usual. I'm going to suggest the point of that article is structure and organization, not naming.

Nobody reasonable complains about a three-letter abbreviation you can type with one hand. For a path you're either accessing a lot or never at all, it makes complete sense.

Anything with a capital letter requires hitting two keys: Shift and then the desired letter. Thus /Programs requires 10 keystrokes rather than 9. Even worse, since the capital letter is at the beginning of the directory name, I have to type it and am unable to rely on tab-completion.

/Programs with its ten keystrokes is over twice the keystrokes of /bin and its four. Short names are quicker to type and require less effort. Given that to a first approximation I spend my entire life typing on a keyboard, I very much wish to optimise that experience.

That's really more the fault of the tab completion. There's no reason why it couldn't complete `prog` to `Programs`. It's just Unix tradition that they don't. I would prefer if they did.

In ~/.inputrc, add

    set completion-ignore-case on

to enable case insensitive tab completion in bash.

Great tip! Apparently that's readline's config file, so this will affect a lot of things. That's great news for me; after switching to zsh I got used to case-insensitive tab completion, and now it annoys me when other tools don't work that way. This should help a lot.

Your problem is solved by naming the thing /programs, instead. End of the world using full words, I tell ya!

I think paths need to have emojis too in order to represent the emotional state of the person who created them in the year of our memelord 2025.

What's wrong with spaces? Macs support them since 80s. The only problem with spaces is caused by *nix, *nix shells, basically by Linux.

While we're at this, let's make it rich text please. I want the important filenames to be in bold italic Comic Sans MS.

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