Спор об именовании папок

Если вам встретится человек, употребляющий в своей речи слова «папка» в значении «каталог», гоните его, насмехайтесь над ним.

И постучитесь головой апстену, так как «папки» родились вместе с первой ОС, имеющей графический интерфейс (Xerox Alto, Xerox Star, 70-е года XX века).

Хорошее объяснение принципиального различия папок и директорий — https://superuser.com/questions/169457/directory-vs-folder. (Тут неточность, Windows 95 не была первой системой, она всего лишь заимствовала решение, которому в 1995 году было уже 20 лет.)

Windows 95 introduced Windows Explorer and along with it the term folder. What is the relationship between folders and directories?

Some people believe that Windows 95 renamed directories to folders, but it’s actually more than that.

Windows Explorer lets you view folders, which are containers in the shell namespace. Directories are one type of folder, namely, folders which correspond to file system locations. There are other types of folders, such as Control Panel or Network Neighborhood or Printers. These other types of folders represent objects in the shell namespace which do not correspond to files. In common usage, the term virtual folder has been applied to refer to folders which are not directories. In other words, we have this Euler diagram:

Файл:Folders.png (Virtual folders = Folders − Directories)

In general, code which manipulates the shell namespace should operate on folders and items, not directories and files, so as not to tie themselves to a particular storage medium. For example, code which limits itself to files won't be able to navigate into a Zip file, since the contents of a Zip file are exposed in the form of a virtual folder.