4 ms·

> exposure to these hidden problems I think this is a key to experience. I spent a large part of my 20s diving into problems and totally screwing up the soluti

> exposure to these hidden problems I think this is a key to experience. I spent a large part of my 20s diving into problems and totally screwing up the solution. I learned a ton from this. On the flip side, maybe 50% of those problems don't exist anymore, because new technology or methodologies have solved them. Knowing how to use CVS or SVN doesn't really count for much in a world dominated by git. I think that's where I value a deep understanding of CS and core engineering practices, regardless of age. Understanding pointers, how to debug, and the difference of the heap vs. the stack hasn't changed much over the years.

ThomPete 11y ago
Yeah the hidden problems I am talking about are less specific. Some of them are problems like workers unions standing in the way of automation of some shipping procedure or that people never thought about it as a problem but rather the cost of doing business. Technology definitely removes a lot of those barriers over time as you say. But there are still plenty of problems that aren't technological and perhaps those are the most interesting.
- wiremine 11y ago
  > But there are still plenty of problems that aren't technological and perhaps those are the most interesting. 100% agree. A lot of problems involve navigating a particular business domain or learning how to work with people.
snomad 11y ago
> Knowing how to use CVS or SVN doesn't really count for much in a world dominated by git. I don't understand the point you are tying to make. What has git so fundamentally changed that SVN/CVS don't count as knowledge / experience?
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Additionally, who says git is dominating? Here, on this forum, it has popularity. In industry its almost unknown. And guess which is the larger part of the world?
  - wiremine 11y ago
    > In industry its almost unknown. Maybe I'm in a microcosm, but everybody in industry I work with switched to git years ago. And I'm definitely not in the valley. :-)
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      There's danger of selection bias. Would you work for a company that used a different tool?
      - wiremine 11y ago
        > Would you work for a company that used a different tool? Of course.
  - pluma 11y ago
    Most companies I've seen when freelancing as a web dev in Germany either used git or were in the process of migrating from SVN to git. That said, there's selection bias involved.
  - volkadav 11y ago
    A few data points to consider: 1) I happen to work in a dev tools company and we definitely see momentum towards git in our customer base. Broadly speaking 2/3rds of our customers (SMEs, F50s, etc. across a broad array of industries) are using it wholly or migrating to it. 2) Several of the larger proprietary SCMs are debuting git compatibility (e.g. p4), implying a belief that expending engineering resources along those lines is perceived as worthwhile. 3) The stackoverflow dev survey that came out recently had git with ~69% of the market: http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#tech-sourcecontrol http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#tech... 4) GitHub (just part of the git market) has over 10M repos now: https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories You can always hope for more data, up to the limit of every programmer on earth answering your question(s), but the trend in the available data is clear: git is extremely popular and becoming ever moreso.
  - 11y ago
- wiremine 11y ago
  > What has git so fundamentally changed that SVN/CVS don't count as knowledge / experience? I think git (and other distributed source control systems) changed the culture around branching and forking. So, if you're coming from a CVS world, there is a lot of technology that changed, and the technology changed the culture/methodology. I.e., if you dropped a CVS user from 1996 into today's world, they would have culture shock, not just a new technology to learn.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    All source control tools have a different model of the source history. You have to relearn that to change tools. The culture change mentioned is nothing to do with Git. It has to do with GitHub. We can talk about that too if we want to.
  - el_fuser 11y ago
    Of course, git was developed by an old guy that used CVS, so....
    - amyjess 11y ago
      Replace CVS with BitKeeper, and you'd be right. Linus never used CVS because he couldn't stand it. The kernel had no version control until BitKeeper came along specifically because Linus wasn't sold on version control until he discovered BitKeeper, and then when McVoy killed their licenses, Linus chose to write his own system because he didn't like any of the existing ones.
      - el_fuser 11y ago
        I must be getting old
      - gvb 11y ago
        But BitKeeper was created by an old guy (Larry Larry McVoy[1]) who was born in 1962. Not only that, but BitKeeper is built on top of SCCS[2] which predates RCS (and RCS predates CVS). BitKeeper was a totally new solution to a very old problem that was "solved" years ago. It was created by an "old guy" who knew the wheel had a large flat spot and figured out how to make it round. It was subsequently adopted by another "old guy" (Linus) who refused to use wheels with flat spots. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_McVoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_McVoy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System

ThomPete 11y ago

Yeah the hidden problems I am talking about are less specific. Some of them are problems like workers unions standing in the way of automation of some shipping procedure or that people never thought about it as a problem but rather the cost of doing business. Technology definitely removes a lot of those barriers over time as you say. But there are still plenty of problems that aren't technological and perhaps those are the most interesting.

wiremine 11y ago
> But there are still plenty of problems that aren't technological and perhaps those are the most interesting. 100% agree. A lot of problems involve navigating a particular business domain or learning how to work with people.

snomad 11y ago

> Knowing how to use CVS or SVN doesn't really count for much in a world dominated by git. I don't understand the point you are tying to make. What has git so fundamentally changed that SVN/CVS don't count as knowledge / experience?

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Additionally, who says git is dominating? Here, on this forum, it has popularity. In industry its almost unknown. And guess which is the larger part of the world?
- wiremine 11y ago
  > In industry its almost unknown. Maybe I'm in a microcosm, but everybody in industry I work with switched to git years ago. And I'm definitely not in the valley. :-)
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    There's danger of selection bias. Would you work for a company that used a different tool?
    - wiremine 11y ago
      > Would you work for a company that used a different tool? Of course.
- pluma 11y ago
  Most companies I've seen when freelancing as a web dev in Germany either used git or were in the process of migrating from SVN to git. That said, there's selection bias involved.
- volkadav 11y ago
  A few data points to consider: 1) I happen to work in a dev tools company and we definitely see momentum towards git in our customer base. Broadly speaking 2/3rds of our customers (SMEs, F50s, etc. across a broad array of industries) are using it wholly or migrating to it. 2) Several of the larger proprietary SCMs are debuting git compatibility (e.g. p4), implying a belief that expending engineering resources along those lines is perceived as worthwhile. 3) The stackoverflow dev survey that came out recently had git with ~69% of the market: http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#tech-sourcecontrol http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#tech... 4) GitHub (just part of the git market) has over 10M repos now: https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories You can always hope for more data, up to the limit of every programmer on earth answering your question(s), but the trend in the available data is clear: git is extremely popular and becoming ever moreso.
- 11y ago
wiremine 11y ago
> What has git so fundamentally changed that SVN/CVS don't count as knowledge / experience? I think git (and other distributed source control systems) changed the culture around branching and forking. So, if you're coming from a CVS world, there is a lot of technology that changed, and the technology changed the culture/methodology. I.e., if you dropped a CVS user from 1996 into today's world, they would have culture shock, not just a new technology to learn.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  All source control tools have a different model of the source history. You have to relearn that to change tools. The culture change mentioned is nothing to do with Git. It has to do with GitHub. We can talk about that too if we want to.
- el_fuser 11y ago
  Of course, git was developed by an old guy that used CVS, so....
  - amyjess 11y ago
    Replace CVS with BitKeeper, and you'd be right. Linus never used CVS because he couldn't stand it. The kernel had no version control until BitKeeper came along specifically because Linus wasn't sold on version control until he discovered BitKeeper, and then when McVoy killed their licenses, Linus chose to write his own system because he didn't like any of the existing ones.
    - el_fuser 11y ago
      I must be getting old
    - gvb 11y ago
      But BitKeeper was created by an old guy (Larry Larry McVoy[1]) who was born in 1962. Not only that, but BitKeeper is built on top of SCCS[2] which predates RCS (and RCS predates CVS). BitKeeper was a totally new solution to a very old problem that was "solved" years ago. It was created by an "old guy" who knew the wheel had a large flat spot and figured out how to make it round. It was subsequently adopted by another "old guy" (Linus) who refused to use wheels with flat spots. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_McVoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_McVoy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System