Re:Commits are snapshots not diffs (2020)
by ajross on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:37PM
(#26742180)
> This is because Git is too hard to use.
Git is hard to LEARN. It is objectively very easy to USE for those who have learned it, so much so that the population of "I used to use git until I found ..." evangelists is effectively zero. Tools like mercurial exist in the marketplace of ideas mostly by peeling off users who haven't yet started using git productively by promising 80% of the features for 10% of the effort.
In fact, I don't know that there has been a new tool since vim or emacs that so well illustrated this dichotomy between ease of learning and ease of use.
But to be honest: it really is needlessly hard to learn. The content of the linked article is that git is built on an extremely simple foundation of data structures and operations that anyone can understand. But the takeaway from the article is that no one does understand it, because that layer is hidden behind a facade of tools that completely obscure it. Where are the "blobs" in git reset? What is the "index"? Is it a "tree" (it's not, IIRC)? I definitely agree with people who complain about the porcelain layer's design. But I still use git every day and love it.
Git is hard to LEARN. It is objectively very easy to USE for those who have learned it, so much so that the population of "I used to use git until I found ..." evangelists is effectively zero. Tools like mercurial exist in the marketplace of ideas mostly by peeling off users who haven't yet started using git productively by promising 80% of the features for 10% of the effort.
In fact, I don't know that there has been a new tool since vim or emacs that so well illustrated this dichotomy between ease of learning and ease of use.
But to be honest: it really is needlessly hard to learn. The content of the linked article is that git is built on an extremely simple foundation of data structures and operations that anyone can understand. But the takeaway from the article is that no one does understand it, because that layer is hidden behind a facade of tools that completely obscure it. Where are the "blobs" in git reset? What is the "index"? Is it a "tree" (it's not, IIRC)? I definitely agree with people who complain about the porcelain layer's design. But I still use git every day and love it.