However, could efforts like these be considered a waste of time?
Consider the ampersand symbol "&", which is recognizable to many people who don't know the French word "et". The main reason is its continuity.
Should we, from a cultural perspective, recognize the value of continuity in cases like these, instead of chasing design trends, and keep the floppy disk symbol?
Which - to nitpick - is actually Latin and pre-dates French by several centuries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand
it has a tradition in English as well, where it has actually more use than in other Latin derived languages, and actually the "ampersand" in English comes from a corruption of "and per se and", losing its original connection to "et".
In Italian the character is called "e commerciale" and in practice it is only used in the (anglo derived) names of firms (besides of course programming), in French it is esperluette, in Spanish it is called directly "et" (or Y comercial) in German it keeps the original relation with "et" as Et-zeichen (also Und-zeichen).
It is a very good example, as it is a symbol that originated in Latin, but which meaning was slightly changed by English and actually remained in common use only there, and survived centuries to "land" as a common symbol in computer scripting and programming.
About the floppy disk icon, it is IMHO a higly debatable one, like the (manilla) folder of the type used in vertical file cabinets, now that these are either completely extinct or only survive in a small number of offices.
I.e. the symbols were created in times where the object represented were extremely common, and as such were a good exemplification of a concept, but think also at the icon Winzip or similar use for compressed archives, a file cabinet inside a (compressing) C-clamp (in times when old-style metal clamps have become rare) compared to the (senseless) one where the symbol is a rectangle with a partially opened zipper.
So, personally I struggle to imagine symbols that could replace them "universally", i.e. there is the risk that any developer/designer would start using different images, creating a modern Tower of Babel.
I'm tired of designers chasing fads.
But as much as possible you should avoid needing one. Saving is an artifact of limited storage and processing. You should instead design a workflow that eliminates the need for saving things. One way is to have a persistent undo stack that is constantly saving -- which has the nice benefit of also being continuously undoable, offers change tracking, and other benefits.
Don't worry about the outdated icon. Worry that the outdated icon represents outdated thinking about what computers are capable of. Computers have changed a lot since the days when we used floppy disks. Use that to your advantage, and get a better product.
I've spent countless hours explaining to my grandparents that the dustbin icon actually means "delete", and if you want to share a picture, you press the button with the three node graph.
Two other icons I could think of without effort are the telephone icon and the camera icon.
I’ve used computers with GUIs for 30 years, and I can’t remember seeing it on many applications at all apart from pre-ribbon Microsoft Office. And now that the trend goes towards everything you do being implicitly saved when you do it, the need for a button with an icon is even smaller.
Many softwares do that already, computers have the resources to make it seamless, and it just makes sense in most cases.
What "people'? Who are these "people"?
> Consider the ampersand symbol "&", which is recognizable to many people who don't know the French word "et"
"et" is a lot older than French, my friend - it's from Latin
https://web.archive.org/web/20080621173441/http://killsave.o...
It's been the symbol literally since forever. There's nothing to accept.
And who is this "we" you speak of?
What kind of Narcissistic perspective is this?