Error prone isn't really that important in a shell when we're just talking about moving around. You type a bunch of dots which puts you in the region more or less -- plus I never really go from 8 directories deep to 2, (I doubt I even have an 8 directory deep section of my file tree) -- if I did I'd start from /, so it's more about 4 or 5 or so, in which case it's easy enough not to count but to know based on context. To each his own though.