🚀 go-pugleaf

Ivan Tisljar wrote:
> Program Files are well organised
> I don't see the difference with installing into C:\Prografiles or C:\My programs

Hi Ivan,

I appreciate your perspective. I will courteously share mine (which
differs slightly from yours). There's no difference between C:\Program
Files & C:\My Programs IF we don't mind two major flaws of C:\Program
Files
- FLATNESS
- ORGANIZATION

FLATNESS: The C:\Program Files flatness is utterly ridiculous. The
long-standing computer rule of thumb (from the UNIX world) is to plan
on having, on average, roughly, about 10 directories at any one level
of a hierarchy. Anything much less is overkill; anything much more
generally begs for another level of hierarchy. In my case, I have
nothing in the top level of C:\My Programs other than ten tasks (my
plan being to install grouped tasks together, e.g., to group media
editors under "My Editors", and to group finance programs under "My
Money", and to group the kid's games under "Tims Games", etc.

ORGANIZATION: Besides the untenable flatness of the C:\Program Files
directory, nobody in their right mind would willingly organize programs
by their brand names. That mixes programs at any one level of hierarchy
that have absolutely nothing to do with each other than they share a
common letter in the alphabet. Even then, some manufacturers respect at
least a single hierarchy (e.g., C:\Program Files\Adobe), while others
create additional flat hierarchies (e.g., C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games, C:\Program Files\Windows
Update, etc.). You see, it's not even organized by brand name.

Put it this way. Say the movers are unpacking your house. Instead of
you telling them to put the garden supplies in the shed, the car in the
garage, the dresses in the bedroom, the shoes in the closet, the linen
in the linen closet, the toothbrush in the bathroom, the dishes in the
kitchen, etc, you allow them to leave EVERYTHING in the living room, in
a bijumbled mess, based loosly on the brand name. Anyone who says this
makes sense is going to have to have a PhD in logic if they plan on
convincing me of the logic in this plan of operation.

To those who would argue that we could organize C:\Program Files
hierarchically, I state that I tried that for years. Basically
Microsoft madness will defeat you. If you change your "programfilesdir"
variable in the system registry you will, all of a sudden, get tons of
total crap in your C:\My Programs directory. The minute you use any
Microsoft Office tool, it does this (try it - you'll despair as I have
already done). Worse yet, the PC comes to you already filled with
unorganized crap in the C:\Program Files directory. Just like the Start
Menu is filled with items organized by a four-year old on LSD.

Basically, anyone wishing to run an organized PC learns the hard way to
leave the Start Menu and C:\Program Files mess as it was when you
bought the machine, wholly unorganized. They then create menus that ARE
organized, and they create a C:\My Programs hierarchy that uses the
SAME task-based organization.

By the way, don't even get me started on the fact that Microsoft thinks
it's perfectly sane to leave an insane set of FILES in the root level
of the C drive! It's obvious they never even thought about where files
belong. But, just because they caved in to chaos doesn't mean we have
to succumb to the Microsoft Madness ourselves!

Respectfully yours,
Susan