Notes:


There's my favourite quote from Lewis Carroll again, and here is a prime example of what I think he was getting at.

In the world of computing, at a time when most people were not expected to be computer users, we started using the word 'File' to mean a sequence of data units grouped together as a unit. The trouble is that this was a redefinition of the term, which was already in use by most other English speakers to mean a container or wallet designed to hold a group of documents. So now, when we need a word to mean a group of documents we have to comandeer another word: Directory. This also has a different meaning in the 'real' world.

We computer people tend not to realise how much difficulty this simple re-definition of words to mean something which is not intuitive to those not in our world. Try teaching a class of seniors on an introduction to computing. It's not their fault - but they are genuinely baffled.

So I suggest that 'File' was a bad name to choose. The people who coined it could not envisage the consequence of their choice. This is one reason why naming is hard.