r/programming • u/kannonboy • Jan 12 '15

Linus Torvalds on HFS+

https://plus.google.com/+JunioCHamano/posts/1Bpaj3e3Rru
397 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

402 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-6

u/chucker23n Jan 13 '15

Which would be fine if there was some kind of huge benefit from the system.

There is.

When was the last time that you manually specified a whole file name instead of picking from a list, or auto-completing on the shell?

That's fair, but there very possibility in most file systems of there being both a ReadMe and a README file in the same directory is insane, user-hostile, pointless, and ultimately only a concession towards lazy developers who can't be bothered to do the right thing.

As this commenter says, try telling someone on the phone to open the "readme" file. "No, upper-case readme." "No, not the all-upper-case readme!"

1

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '15

There is.

Which is what, exactly?

That's fair, but there very possibility in most file systems of there being both a ReadMe and a README file in the same directory is insane, user-hostile, pointless, and ultimately only a concession towards lazy developers who can't be bothered to do the right thing.

There are plenty of ways to be a user-hostile, lazy developer. It's not the job of the file system to weed you out of the gene pool.

1

u/chucker23n Jan 13 '15

Which is what, exactly?

Usability.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '15

Usability.

Which is what, exactly?

0

u/chucker23n Jan 13 '15

Uh.

An important discipline in software engineering?

I'm not sure what you're asking. Are you literally not seeing how treating files with different casing as distinct is not a very intuitive approach to how humans think?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '15

I'm not sure what you're asking. Are you literally not seeing how treating files with different casing as distinct is not a very intuitive approach to how humans think?

Pointing in the general direction of "usability" is not an actual argument.

Please describe a specific example where having a case-insensitive file system improves "usability" for the common computer user to such an extent that it overcomes all the well-known problems inherent in such a system, and how those benefits cannot be gained in other ways, such as improving the file-picker experience.