The reports of the death of the file(system) are grossly exaggerated.<p>And it's not been for lack of trying.<p>While I share many of the author's misgivings, files are actually making a bit of a comeback. After many years of trying to void the very idea of a file, Apple was essentially forced to introduce the <i>Files</i> app for iOS and introduce mass-storage support for (some) iPads. This is a good sign.<p>The anti-file movement has also been very strong and vocal in the programming world, where many claim that many if not all of our programming problems would go away if only we put our code in databases, or (Smalltalk) images instead. Yet the files, they persist.<p>That doesn't mean that files, or hierarchical filesystems, are perfect. However, whatever the problems ("Unititled 54.txt", anyone?), the proposed cures for what ails files invariably appear to be worse than the symptoms. And almost inevitably, we have to bring back or reinvent the very same concepts that we gleefully got rid of. That's a resilient concept! One that is apparently useful and pertinent at a somewhat deeper level than we fully understand.<p>So how about we stop trying to "get rid of files", but instead see if we cannot improve the concept and the mechanism(s) to fix the problems.