GEN Z KIDS APPARENTLY DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW FILE SYSTEMS WORK

[Checkerboard Strangler]

GEN Z KIDS APPARENTLY DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW FILE SYSTEMS WORK​

"THEY SEE IT LIKE ONE BUCKET, AND EVERYTHING'S IN THE BUCKET."

"I grew up when you had to have a file; you had to save it; you had to know where it was saved. There was no search function," Borough of Manhattan Community College astronomy professor Saavik Ford told The Verge. "[Now] there's not a conception that there's a place where files live. They just search for it and bring it up."

It's as if students "have a laundry basket full of laundry" Ford added, "and they have a robot who will fetch them every piece of clothing they want on demand."

Students who grew up with search engines might change STEM education forever

Professors are struggling to teach Gen Z

www.theverge.com

She’d laid out the assignment clearly, but student after student was calling her over for help. They were all getting the same error message: The program couldn’t find their files.
Garland thought it would be an easy fix. She asked each student where they’d saved their project. Could they be on the desktop? Perhaps in the shared drive? But over and over, she was met with confusion. “What are you talking about?” multiple students inquired. Not only did they not know where their files were saved — they didn’t understand the question.

“I tend to think an item lives in a particular folder. It lives in one place, and I have to go to that folder to find it,” Garland says. “They see it like one bucket, and everything’s in the bucket.”

I don't know how much I take stock in this but from where I sit, the more involved they are in gaming, or focused exclusively on phones and tablets, the more I see some truth in it.
But on the other end of the spectrum there are legions of Gen Z and beyond who are wizards at working with file systems.

How do you see it?

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

“I tend to think an item lives in a particular folder. It lives in one place, and I have to go to that folder to find it,” Garland says. “They see it like one bucket, and everything’s in the bucket.”

Wow, that's the first time I've ever heard dependency on search engines explained so succinctly.

 

[Gaius46]

I grew up working with directories and file systems - hell managing that stuff was a part of my job as a new, just out of school, sysadmin. I was annoyed when I realized that I didn’t have access to my new iPhone’s or iPad’s file system back in the day - that has since changed.

All that said these days I’m happy to delegate the grunt work of managing files to the apps most of the time and remembering where things are to search engines. Frees up what few brain cells I have left for other things.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

I grew up working with directories and file systems - hell managing that stuff was a part of my job as a new, just out of school, sysadmin. I was annoyed when I realized that I didn’t have access to my new iPhone’s or iPad’s file system back in the day - that has since changed.

All that said these days I’m happy to delegate the grunt work of managing files to the apps most of the time and remembering where things are to search engines. Frees up what few brain cells I have left for other things.

But for me it's as natural as breathing!
I need to file something, it has to go in a particular folder, quite natural.
But this is what I encounter all the time lately, and it's not just Apple either,



I can show you Windows users who do exactly the same thing...



The way Windows operates, if you do this nonsense it eventually bogs down the machine to where it takes five or ten minutes to boot to the desktop.
If I am not mistaken, it's because Win treats the desktop almost like a web page and it has to PUT all those files ON that page.

That's the "it's all one bucket and everything's in the bucket" mentality at work.

 

[BirdinHand]

Gen Z will be using AI to organize their files.

This entire topic will be a moot point shortly if it isn’t already.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Ah well, the thread got moved.
Sorry bout that, I guess I made a mistake picking Tech Support, not realizing it was meant for DP tech and not outside stuff, my apologies.

 

[Gaius46]

But for me it's as natural as breathing!
I need to file something, it has to go in a particular folder, quite natural.
But this is what I encounter all the time lately, and it's not just Apple either,

View attachment 67491842

I can show you Windows users who do exactly the same thing...

View attachment 67491844

The way Windows operates, if you do this nonsense it eventually bogs down the machine to where it takes five or ten minutes to boot to the desktop.
If I am not mistaken, it's because Win treats the desktop almost like a web page and it has to PUT all those files ON that page.

That's the "it's all one bucket and everything's in the bucket" mentality at work.

Ah. I misunderstood. What you're talking more about is organized vs disorganized.

Those look like my wife's laptop. Here's mine



I tend to use whatever best meets my needs. Sometimes it's the filesystem sometimes it's whatever organizing system the application I'm using has. For example I have over 500 files of sheet music. They're kept in a folder on my laptop. I could use sub folders to organize them any number of ways but would be limited to that one way. That's not necessarily true, some OSes allow for ways to have multiple folder entires for a single file - Unix symbolic links and VMS' logical names are two examples. But they're generally a pain in the ass to maintain.

I happen to use a sheet music app on my iPad called Forscore. It has the ability to attach metadata to your sheet music: composer/performer, genre, key, time, plus tagging. I can, and do, organize my sheet music by the band that plays them - my own, or one of several that I fill in for (and often a single song is done by more than one), the instrument I play on it, where they are in the learning process (some pieces may take weeks or months to learn, is it something I need to revisit every now and again to keep it under my fingers etc etc. It's anal retentively organized but doesn't use the underlying filesystem because it would be impossible to maintain that level of organization with a file system.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Ah. I misunderstood. What you're talking more about is organized vs disorganized.

Those look like my wife's laptop. Here's mine

View attachment 67491859

I tend to use whatever best meets my needs. Sometimes it's the filesystem sometimes it's whatever organizing system the application I'm using has. For example I have over 500 files of sheet music. They're kept in a folder on my laptop. I could use sub folders to organize them any number of ways but would be limited to that one way. That's not necessarily true, some OSes allow for ways to have multiple folder entires for a single file - Unix symbolic links and VMS' logical names are two examples. But they're generally a pain in the ass to maintain.

I happen to use a sheet music app on my iPad called Forscore. It has the ability to attach metadata to your sheet music: composer/performer, genre, key, time, plus tagging. I can, and do, organize my sheet music by the band that plays them - my own, or one of several that I fill in for (and often a single song is done by more than one), the instrument I play on it, where they are in the learning process (some pieces may take weeks or months to learn, is it something I need to revisit every now and again to keep it under my fingers etc etc. It's anal retentively organized but doesn't use the underlying filesystem because it would be impossible to maintain that level of organization with a file system.

Well done.
BTW I do HAVE two laptops but both of them have less than 50 hours lifetime total on them because I tend to stick with the big iron.
My desktop workstation has six drives so my desktop is very sparse!

 

[Integrityrespec]

GEN Z KIDS APPARENTLY DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW FILE SYSTEMS WORK​

I don't know how much I take stock in this but from where I sit, the more involved they are in gaming, or focused exclusively on phones and tablets, the more I see some truth in it.
But on the other end of the spectrum there are legions of Gen Z and beyond who are wizards at working with file systems.

How do you see it?

Sort of like they, or at least some of them, don't seen to understand that when you sign your name on a loan you are supposed to pay it back and not ask the country to do it for you. Your name is your bond as they say. By accepting the Biden bailout you saddled millions of middle class families with your debt.

 

[BirdinHand]

Sort of like they, or at least some of them, don't seen to understand that when you sign your name on a loan you are supposed to pay it back and not ask the country to do it for you. Your name is your bond as they say. By accepting the Biden bailout you saddled millions of middle class families with your debt.

Gen Z isn’t old enough to get student loan relief that Biden spoke of.

 

[Gaius46]

Sort of like they, or at least some of them, don't seen to understand that when you sign your name on a loan you are supposed to pay it back and not ask the country to do it for you. Your name is your bond as they say. By accepting the Biden bailout you saddled millions of middle class families with your debt.

I am simply amazed at the ability of some people to make every ****ing thing political.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Sort of like they, or at least some of them, don't seen to understand that when you sign your name on a loan you are supposed to pay it back and not ask the country to do it for you. Your name is your bond as they say. By accepting the Biden bailout you saddled millions of middle class families with your debt.

Not at all like that...this is about computer file systems.

But thank you for demonstrating your complete inability to have a normal convo about something besides your butt-hurt MAGA cultism.

 

[Lord Tammerlain]

Experience and training,

Gen Z will learn over time, it would be faster with some knowledge transfer and explanation of why it would be better.

Gen x baby boomers and perhaps Gen y I believe have forgotten what they were like in their 20s

 

[The Stars Tremble]

I'd be happier with 'one big bucket.' Most of my stuff stays in Downloads, and I find them by date and name.

 

[Slartibartfast]

I am weirdly terrible at organizing my stuff into folders and end up with stuff everywhere that I have to clean up every few months. At least for personal documents.

All my stuff is synced to a local nas and one drive, so its not a huge issue.

 

[Roadvirus]

But for me it's as natural as breathing!
I need to file something, it has to go in a particular folder, quite natural.
But this is what I encounter all the time lately, and it's not just Apple either,

View attachment 67491842

I can show you Windows users who do exactly the same thing...

View attachment 67491844

The way Windows operates, if you do this nonsense it eventually bogs down the machine to where it takes five or ten minutes to boot to the desktop.
If I am not mistaken, it's because Win treats the desktop almost like a web page and it has to PUT all those files ON that page.

That's the "it's all one bucket and everything's in the bucket" mentality at work.

Geez. All i have on my laptop desktop is the Recycle Bin, and at the bottom, the Windows menu, Microsoft Edge, the search icon, the battery, WiFi & speaker icons.

I feel like a slacker

 

[Visbek]

How do you see it?

I see it as yet another hilariously silly moral panic that probably has little to no basis in reality.

 

[zincwarrior]

I feel old. These are files.

This is file storage

I am going to go home and yell at some kids to get off my lawn now.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

I see it as yet another hilariously silly moral panic that probably has little to no basis in reality.

Nothing "moral" about it, just surprise at the realization that a lot of kids think that you can just file everything haphazardly and expect organized results.
It's a computer, not a moral issue, it's a practical issue.

You could compare it to newer drivers who think putting windshield washer fluid in the OIL filler is normal and vice versa and everything will just sort itself out in the engine.

 

[zincwarrior]

Nothing "moral" about it, just surprise at the realization that a lot of kids think that you can just file everything haphazardly and expect organized results.
It's a computer, not a moral issue, it's a practical issue.

You could compare it to newer drivers who think putting windshield washer fluid in the OIL filler is normal and vice versa and everything will just sort itself out in the engine.

Thats because in their world, they don't have to.

 

[HonestJoe]

I don't know how much I take stock in this but from where I sit, the more involved they are in gaming, or focused exclusively on phones and tablets, the more I see some truth in it.
But on the other end of the spectrum there are legions of Gen Z and beyond who are wizards at working with file systems.

How do you see it?

It sounds like a classic example of the "young people are bad and wrong" attitude that has existed throughout history. These old(er) educators are complaining that students 30 or more years younger than them inevitably have a different (not better or worse) set of general knowledge and experience. I'd suggest that those educators need to cater their teaching to their students rather than expecting those students to automatically have specific knowledge and skills.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

It sounds like a classic example of the "young people are bad and wrong" attitude that has existed throughout history. These old(er) educators are complaining that students 30 or more years younger than them inevitably have a different (not better or worse) set of general knowledge and experience. I'd suggest that those educators need to cater their teaching to their students rather than expecting those students to automatically have specific knowledge and skills.

Oh come on....
Computers use a filing system, that has not changed.
If you're just a casual user none of this matters but if you use it for work and your job expects you to have organized files, do you see how this might be a problem?

 

[HonestJoe]

Oh come on....
Computers use a filing system, that has not changed.
If you're just a casual user none of this matters but if you use it for work and your job expects you to have organized files, do you see how this might be a problem?

I'm not saying it isn't a problem, but it's not a new or unique problem. Students moving in to any specialist field are going to need to learn some basic knowledge and skills that aren't common knowledge, and what is common knowledge, especially in fast moving fields such as computing, if going to shift over time (and indeed vary significantly across a cohort). Rather than moaning that younger generations are different to how we were at their age, we need to accept those changes and cater the education system to the students.

For example, I'm of an age that means I was among the first generation of computer users to grow up with graphical interfaces (like Windows) rather than text-based command lines. When I was doing Computer Science, the graphical options were more natural for me and I had to learn the command line options. My older colleagues, who grew up using command lines, would have to learn the graphical interfaces. Even today, many technical tasks are best (or can only be) done via one or the other so engineers need to master both, but it doesn't matter which came more natural to anyone.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

I'm not saying it isn't a problem, but it's not a new or unique problem. Students moving in to any specialist field are going to need to learn some basic knowledge and skills that aren't common knowledge, and what is common knowledge, especially in fast moving fields such as computing, if going to shift over time (and indeed vary significantly across a cohort).

And that's the whole point of the article in the first place. Nobody is moaning or launching attacks on kids, they're just expressing shock and surprise that what we learned as a matter of course slipped on by this next generation so easily. In fact, I lay responsibility on those who should have maintained a solid core of curriculums to make sure that it didn't. The kids can learn just fine, it's just that the opportunities to catch them when it was most important went on by and no one noticed, until now.

 

[zincwarrior]

And that's the whole point of the article in the first place. Nobody is moaning or launching attacks on kids, they're just expressing shock and surprise that what we learned as a matter of course slipped on by this next generation so easily. In fact, I lay responsibility on those who should have maintained a solid core of curriculums to make sure that it didn't. The kids can learn just fine, it's just that the opportunities to catch them when it was most important went on by and no one noticed, until now.

So you're saying its their first job or situation that this has occurred, and they learned from it... and?