
Ask HN: Do We Need Folders? - grodes
Our digital filesystems are designed from the idea of how we used to store our data before computers: sheets within folders within drawers within buildings.
Everything follows a child&lt;&gt;parent relationship<p>Has anybody experimented before with a different approach for organizing data in a computer?
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iamNumber4
No, just call them directories, thinking of them as logical buckets to place
things in them, which can be used to store data or direct you down further to
find and location any information placed within the hierarchy structure.

Please note, if it is not broke don’t fix it. As well as new does not mean
improved.

Also the file system found within computer operating systems were modeled
after ways to categorize and store information that is both easy to use, and
understand. Humans have been using systems like this for so long the inventors
of that system are all but forgotten, as the concept can be seen through out
history from how libraries have organized their collections of knowledge
building, floor, isle, case, shelf, book, page, paragraph, sentence; all of
which are conceptual examples of a directory. As well as other forms of
systems in the same vain, country, state, city, district/neighborhood, street,
block, house, room, file cabinet, drawer, folder, document.

Then as other suggestions in comments relational databases having database,
table, row, column.

Each of those are also the concept of a directory.

Which can be defined as the ability to hold something, including more
directories.

And a storage system can be described as a system of associated directories
with a means of linking, nesting, indexing to provide means of navigation for
location of things held within the system.

So, if there is a better way, humans have not yet grasped upon or discovered
yet.

If you have ideas, go for it, but make sure your not reinventing the age old
design with different nomenclature. You may also like looking into graph
theory and object oriented design as areas of topics to learn about/discover.

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als0
I think there have been many unsuccessful attempts to simply treat data
storage as entries in a relational database. The most well known one was WinFS
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS)

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onion2k
I always thought SQL would make a nice filesystem interface. People have
experimented with doing it - [http://etia.co.uk/](http://etia.co.uk/)

