Comment by TheZenPsycho | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheZenPsycho | Hacker News Reader

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I think it just shows that you do computers wrong.

Okay sorry that sounds snarky and unproductive- What I mean is, as a model for how human evolved navigation works- a persistant work space with effectively no need to "save" work is more like reality. If you scribble something on a napkin, and leave it on your desk, the desk doesn't demand you name the napkin when you try to leave the house. At the exact moment you need to leave to go to work, is the exact moment you are least prepared to think of a name and location to find something later.

But with a persistent workspace, you can just shut the program instantly, without being spammed by 15 "save, discard, cancel" dialogues. Pressing the power button on the computer, and having the computer just.. turn off… and then turn back on having not forgotten anything by accident or otherwise. You can name and save stuff AT YOUR LEISURE.

that. is. the. future.

…. of 1996. It's 2014 now and we've just now gotten round to adding it… to one program. a text editor. now we just need to get the rest of the developers in the world on board with this really obviously correct thing to do.

> If you scribble something on a napkin, and leave it on your desk, the desk doesn't demand you name the napkin when you try to leave the house

Maybe if they did, my desk wouldn't be so untidy right now.

The save/discard/cancel dialogs are there for a reason: the computer doesn't know whether you want to save or discard! "Keep everything" is not a solution.

Usually I will keep about 50% of the "unattached" files I create. Some will be good ideas: they get saved. Some will be go nowhere: I throw those away.

For files attached to a project it's more like 100% -- so they should be named upfront on creation.

Besides, doing something "at your leisure" is a euphemism for never doing it at all. People are difficult like that.

so when you're trying to do something else is the time to be making these decisions?

On the bright side, if memristors work the way I think they do, by 2030 you should be able to shut down any computer and turn it on in to precisely the same state as it was before, even if things are in mid-computation.

I have this feature I really like in Windows, Linux and Mac OS X that's called "hibernate". It basically works like you described :-)

(Expecting explanation on why hibernation is considered harmful. )

Is there an argument that hibernate is harmful? I hadn't heard that one.

It's certainly useful, but I think the comment you were replying to was thinking more along the lines of saving that state without doing all the work our computers have to do to go into hibernate.

I for one would love a faster and less error prone sleep/hibernate feature. (Although recent Mac OS implementations have really cut down on the error prone part of that. I'm not sure where the Linux/Windows crowd is on that, I would assume the story is the same/similar.)

OS X has also really cut down on the time it takes as well. I close my Macbook Air, and the lights cut off instantly. I open it up, and in the time it takes me to type in my password, it's loaded itself to the exact state I left it in (actually did it while typing this comment). I haven't used a Windows or Linux laptop in a while, but I hope for the sake of people that have, that it's a similar experience. Having the freedom to close your laptop without a second thought is great.

actually, several programs of the OSX stack behaves like this, take the Notes app for example

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