For those of us that grew up with and around technology in general, computers specifically, the concepts of folder structure and a file shouldn’t sound too foreign. But they’re some of the things that are easy to take for granted. At the risk of sounding like the neighbourhood old man that tells you to get off his grass, much of today’s youth has grown up with smartphones and operating systems that simplify that side of using a computer. When they need a file, they just search for it.

A folder, inside another folder

If you’re either too young to know what we’re talking about when we say ‘folder structure’, or maybe you’re old enough to have already forgotten, we can go back to the tried and tested filing cabinet metaphor. Just like in your office you might have — or had at one point — one of those metal filing cabinets with the many drawers that were labelled something appropriate. Maybe, A-I, J-R and S-Z. Inside those drawers, you had a folder of some sort and in those folders, you had documents of varying description.

Well kids, computers work in much the same way. The ‘Downloads’ folder where everything you download magically appears, doesn’t exist by its self in a void. It lives in your user folder which lives in the ‘Users’ folder and that one lives in the root folder.

Breaking news, technology is changing

These days, however, most apps and operating systems have useful search functions, so instead of having to navigate through multiple folders to look for a file you saved, you can search for it and it’s given to you. In the minds of the youth, this is turning the file cabinet into a big chest or bucket into which everything is tossed.

This change isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Who actually wants to waste their time digging through folders to find something when it can be given to you in a few seconds? This is assuming whatever search function you’re using actually works *cough* Windows *cough*.

Source: PC Gamer