> Have we really improved things? I find these new file abstractions we have created to be much more confusing.
We haven't, and here's why: a file system was one abstraction. A simple one, that made sense, and wasn't very far detached from actual implementation details. Which meant that weird black magic almost never leaked from underneath.
What we have now, with the cloud and dumbed down software, is many mutually inconsistent and sometimes incompatible abstractions, all completely detached from the reality behind them, which means they have inconsistent corner cases that make no sense unless you know enough about software to be able to imagine what those abstractions are backed by.
In the best tradition of commerce, we've helped people avoid having to learn a simple concept by introducing them to lots of "simplifying" lies.
We haven't, and here's why: a file system was one abstraction. A simple one, that made sense, and wasn't very far detached from actual implementation details. Which meant that weird black magic almost never leaked from underneath.
What we have now, with the cloud and dumbed down software, is many mutually inconsistent and sometimes incompatible abstractions, all completely detached from the reality behind them, which means they have inconsistent corner cases that make no sense unless you know enough about software to be able to imagine what those abstractions are backed by.
In the best tradition of commerce, we've helped people avoid having to learn a simple concept by introducing them to lots of "simplifying" lies.