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"It’s easy, in the yin/yang of Hacker News and proggit, to forget that most developers are not even aware of what DVCSes are or what they do." It's also easy,

"It’s easy, in the yin/yang of Hacker News and proggit, to forget that most developers are not even aware of what DVCSes are or what they do." It's also easy, in the yin/yang (what?) of Hacker News and proggit, to forget that there's plenty of developers RIGHT HERE who do not grok DVCS. I sort of know what they are, and that they making branching suck less or something. Hello, I'm nollidge, and I don't get DVCS. Where do I start?

eru 17y ago
There are a lot of good tutorials on the net. Just search for them.
zaphar 17y ago
Pick one. Start a project in it. Stick with it till you get past the learning curve. Wait for the light bulb to go off. There is really no better way to "get it". It will have some pain at first and you won't understand the benefits immediately but one day when you're coding and suddenly realize that you no longer weigh the pain and risks of creating a branch you'll suddenly wonder how you did without this tool for so long.
tbrownaw 17y ago
I started with http://monotone.ca/monotone.html#Concepts http://monotone.ca/monotone.html#Concepts . Git and Mercurial took the same basic history structure and offer roughly the same abilities, but don't make such extensive use of certificates and have slightly different concepts of what a "branch" actually is and how branches relate to repositories and working copies.
steveklabnik 17y ago
For me, it was watching Linus' Google talk on git, and then reading some tutorials, and then just doing it. Linus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 GitReady: http://gitready.com/ Pro Git: http://progit.org/book/ A short little bit about git's internal model: http://eagain.net/articles/git-for-computer-scientists/ GitHub's Git Cheat Sheet: http://github.com/guides/git-cheat-sheet A successful git branching model. gorgeous workflow and pictures. http://nvie.com/archives/323 Also, if you have any questions, feel free to email me. The only reason someone should be using SVN now is if there are institutional reasons or if you use lots of large binary files. I'd rather you send me an email about something that seems hard than give up and use an inferior tool. I'm not an absolute git master, but I've ended up explaining it to most of my classmates, so I've given that explanation a few times already.
- nollidge 17y ago
  At work we have LOTS of large binary files, yes. Static dependencies in C#. But I'll give it a go for personal projects. Thanks!
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    No problem. It's something that's being worked on, just merging them becomes a pain. If your dependencies are truly static, in the sense that you're not modifying them or updating them often, it shouldn't be a big deal. Usually it's large images or other 'asset' type stuff that causes a bloated repo.
nollidge 17y ago
For the sake of hopeful web-searchers FROM THE FUTURE, I eventually found http://hginit.com/ http://hginit.com/ , which is an awesome intro to DVCS (specifically Mercurial).

eru 17y ago

There are a lot of good tutorials on the net. Just search for them.

zaphar 17y ago

Pick one. Start a project in it. Stick with it till you get past the learning curve. Wait for the light bulb to go off. There is really no better way to "get it". It will have some pain at first and you won't understand the benefits immediately but one day when you're coding and suddenly realize that you no longer weigh the pain and risks of creating a branch you'll suddenly wonder how you did without this tool for so long.

tbrownaw 17y ago

I started with http://monotone.ca/monotone.html#Concepts http://monotone.ca/monotone.html#Concepts . Git and Mercurial took the same basic history structure and offer roughly the same abilities, but don't make such extensive use of certificates and have slightly different concepts of what a "branch" actually is and how branches relate to repositories and working copies.

steveklabnik 17y ago

For me, it was watching Linus' Google talk on git, and then reading some tutorials, and then just doing it. Linus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 GitReady: http://gitready.com/ Pro Git: http://progit.org/book/ A short little bit about git's internal model: http://eagain.net/articles/git-for-computer-scientists/ GitHub's Git Cheat Sheet: http://github.com/guides/git-cheat-sheet A successful git branching model. gorgeous workflow and pictures. http://nvie.com/archives/323 Also, if you have any questions, feel free to email me. The only reason someone should be using SVN now is if there are institutional reasons or if you use lots of large binary files. I'd rather you send me an email about something that seems hard than give up and use an inferior tool. I'm not an absolute git master, but I've ended up explaining it to most of my classmates, so I've given that explanation a few times already.

nollidge 17y ago
At work we have LOTS of large binary files, yes. Static dependencies in C#. But I'll give it a go for personal projects. Thanks!
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  No problem. It's something that's being worked on, just merging them becomes a pain. If your dependencies are truly static, in the sense that you're not modifying them or updating them often, it shouldn't be a big deal. Usually it's large images or other 'asset' type stuff that causes a bloated repo.

nollidge 17y ago

For the sake of hopeful web-searchers FROM THE FUTURE, I eventually found http://hginit.com/ http://hginit.com/ , which is an awesome intro to DVCS (specifically Mercurial).