It's important on any system, not just XDG. The OS will assume you do, and offer features based on it, such as cleaning cache dirs, emptying temp dirs, etc.<p>It's not just about being tidy, although it's important.<p>But remembering all that stuff is annoying.<p>If you use Python, the wonderful "appdirs" package will make using the best dir for the job on Windows, Mac and Linux, easy and transparent: <a href="https://pypi.org/project/appdirs/" rel="nofollow">https://pypi.org/project/appdirs/</a><p>I wish it was part of the stdlib.<p>Another thing that grind my gears is people putting files inside their code project folder for development.<p>It should be something configurable, that by default use the OS dir for prod, and "../var" dir with everything on it in dev.<p>Less gitignore trouble, let's watcher overhead, less indexing for nothing, less clutter in file explorers, less possibility for errors.<p>But you need to provide an easy way to locate those files, such as a cmd line entrypoints, otherwise it's painful.