How do you organize files?

Hierarchy in file system was a great invention, popularized by Unix. Files in directory, directory in directory. Creating a tree. Files get designated place in the file system. People are using in well functioning manners, at least as I think they are doing, and I am unable to.

I have spend countless minutes to think just how I would put certain files, what would be the name of the directory, where should it be allocated, how would I access it, can it be done quickly, will I remember where I have put it?

Think for example, the source code of programs. should I put them in 'code' named folder. Then what would I name the folder where I am learning Ocaml. Where would I put this source of Raylib, the various markdown files, what happens to got repos I own and fetch. Well, writing this I am getting the feel that the answer to this maybe self exploratory for this example.

Think another one. PDF documents. There are a lot of PDFs I have here and there. Books on various subjects - from math, physics, CS to botany, mycology. Papers of various kinds. Article, RFC, manual, specification, and many more. How do I arrange them in accessible way? I don't know how to do at the way that would satisfy my thoughts.

How about the media download using Torrent, or the contents I am trying to make. Just make a folder on desktop! Help me!

I find myself wondering how many other experienced computer users do it on their machines. I lost my mind in it.

2 points | by dekdrop 2 hours ago

4 comments

  • miladyincontrol 1 hour ago
    Is there a program that exists to organize such files? If so I delegate the task. ie documents in paperless, images in immich, etc. Bonus points for the tools that can use embeddings to search locally the context of files.

    If its a kind of file set that benefits from snapshotting, often I have them in some sort of location appropriate.

    I dont stress too much though, I keep the results of many of my system's find results in a text file I grep through. I worry a lot more about the name of files or their immediate folders rather than where they go.

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    • dekdrop 31 minutes ago
      how do you approach naming files and immediate folders?
  • joknoll 2 hours ago
    I think the abstraction of files as a tree is rudimentary and broken. The concept of organizing files in folders is too limiting. I think tagging based filesystems would enable much more flexible and better organized files/data.

    So I don't think you are the issue, but an old paradigm from fourty years ago, forced upon users of every computer ;)

  • NetOpWibby 2 hours ago
    Tell Claude to generate a Johnny Decimal[1] script for your Downloads folder and go from there.

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    [1]: https://johnnydecimal.com

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    • dekdrop 31 minutes ago
      This seems overcomplicated
  • sarahcollinscac 2 hours ago
    [flagged]