Fair point. For all my whining, I use both Git and Linux every day, they are incredible pieces of technology, especially compared to what came before.

not necessarily better than most other good engineers...

He knows a lot about his domain, sure, but he's no god and there are a lot of areas he knows diddley-squat about.... user interface design for one!

> He knows a lot about his domain, sure, but he's no god and there are a lot of areas he knows diddley-squat about.... user interface design for one!

And Einstein knew nothing about biology.

I'm sure he knows "diddley-squat" about most areas, but as long as he knows a lot about his domain then he's an expert.

And he is good at user interface design, and git is a good example of that; it's just not aimed at beginners. It was designed by and for expert users, and the interface fits that very well.

no, its not a good UI.

admittedly "expert" UIs are different from "noob" UIs, but the number of "git magic spell" followers out there mean that it isn't a good UI for the majority of people who use git.

Well, if you treat git as Torvalds intended it in the beginning (framework for building VCS-es) and accordingly limit the discussion to git's plumbing command set, you get a sensibly good UI+architecture that is targeted at programmers that write VCS-es.

Git being operable with a pry bar and repairable with a hammer is a good proof that in this context it's a good design.

I'm not sure why a kernel developer would need to concern themselves with UI design?

Hah, so just like git then.