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A window is full of physical metaphors, like buttons, draggable handles/bars, tabs/paging.

But yes, it is also an abstraction of a set of related functions that manipulate or show data. It is even necessarily an abstraction of the computational objects it represents. But the sign(s) of the window points to physical/metaphorical objects.

Now the name "file" is also a metaphor. It represents (abstracts) a block of physical memory. But "file" is (or was) a sign for a physical thing made out of paper.

The metaphor of a file is on one hand useful, as it helps to understand physical memory as a set of objects we relate to in the outside world.

However it is also misleading: A real world file is typically immutable, to a high practical degree at least. We usually don't change files outside of correcting mistakes. We just add them and put a date. The file is first in "working" mode, then it is "done" quasi forever. To achieve the same with the computational object we need to impose constraints and/or discipline.



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