> Who decided that sorting by date instead of name was a good idea?

It depends on the context. Sometimes when I'm looking at photos, I really do prefer sorting by date. Similarly, when I'm looking at the Downloads folder, I'm probably most interested in the thing I just downloaded, so having that near the top makes a lot of sense and would gladly prefer that than having it sorted alphabetically.

However, if I'm just looking at a directory of documents, alphabetical wins for sure. If I'm looking at a music collection, I'd probably want to sort by artist name alphabetically, but not necessarily filename.