The folders look stupid in 7. One for "7" programs. And another set for Windows XP programs.
All programs installed to Win7 are "Win 7" programs. Maybe you are referring to 32bit and 64bit applications? If so, this is not stupid, it is necessary if you install the 64bit Win7. If you want to run 64 bit applications (most don't) then you could get around this if you really wanted to by installing 32bit Windows 7. But then you would loose out on support for more than 4GB RAM.
Or perhaps you are talking about the virtual XP mode available with some Win7 variants? In which case they should really be considered as separate OSs rather than one OS with two different types of programs.
What happened to sort by name, type, date and modified. I use that a lot in XP.
Sort by whatever is still supported in Win7/8/8.1 folders. All you need to do is switch the folder to "details" view then you can click the column headings and sort in whatever order you want. Details view can be preserved and/or applied to all folders if you really want. There are other ways to sort by too, such as right click.
Tricky