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Git, even for a command line system, is hardly an example of good UI. It's a very powerful system, but when you compare its commands and usage to something like

Git, even for a command line system, is hardly an example of good UI. It's a very powerful system, but when you compare its commands and usage to something like Mercurial, for example (especially early in GIT's lifecycle) Mercurial had much better named commands, it was designed to be a lot easier for someone coming from the popular RCSes at the time, and did not have contradictory argument placements in different but related commands.

meira 10y ago
I think git has a wonderful UI and mainly UX. I don't think the quality of a sword should be discussed based on the easiness to use to an apprentice. It's good to be a great tool for the ones who master it. And someone can master a lot of things in life, but not everything that he is not able to master is because of a bad UI/UX.
- addicted 10y ago
  That's exactly why I provided Mercurial as an example. Mercurial is as complex a system as GIT, yet the commands are not close to being as messy as GIT's (or as numerous, for that matter, but it can still achieve the same things, as far as RCS is concerned). But you don't even have to compare it to anything else. GIT's lack of design and thought is completely evident at simply looking at how certain commands arbitrarily reverse the orders of source and dest params. This adds absolutely no value, and only makes things more difficult, even for experts. What it does do is display is a lack of thought and design. Which, as is evident, may not be an issue in professional circles, but is a huge problem in achieving success on the desktop, which will necessarily require usage by a lot of newbies and people who don't want to know much more about their computers than the location of the on switch and how they can get to Facebook.
- dhimes 10y ago
  But as a sword is it any better than hg?
angry-hacker 10y ago
Let's face it, git is only popular because of github. Most the people just use commit and push. All other systems are more user friendly and make more sense. Linus built git for his own needs and that's fine, but in reality git for the majority of devs is not necessary.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "Most the people just use commit and push." And there it is: 'Git' has some amazing things, but 90% of time time, you want to do simple things. Git makes doing the simple, common things hard - and makes doing sophisticated things 'possible'. A 'good product' makes doing the common things 'easy' and the sophisticated things 'possible'. For what git does most of the time - there is absolutely no reason for the obfuscation and complexity. Hence - bad product design.
- Shorel 10y ago
  It's also popular because it has better performance than all the competition. Most of the time it doesn't matter. But when it matters, it really matters.

meira 10y ago

I think git has a wonderful UI and mainly UX. I don't think the quality of a sword should be discussed based on the easiness to use to an apprentice. It's good to be a great tool for the ones who master it. And someone can master a lot of things in life, but not everything that he is not able to master is because of a bad UI/UX.

addicted 10y ago
That's exactly why I provided Mercurial as an example. Mercurial is as complex a system as GIT, yet the commands are not close to being as messy as GIT's (or as numerous, for that matter, but it can still achieve the same things, as far as RCS is concerned). But you don't even have to compare it to anything else. GIT's lack of design and thought is completely evident at simply looking at how certain commands arbitrarily reverse the orders of source and dest params. This adds absolutely no value, and only makes things more difficult, even for experts. What it does do is display is a lack of thought and design. Which, as is evident, may not be an issue in professional circles, but is a huge problem in achieving success on the desktop, which will necessarily require usage by a lot of newbies and people who don't want to know much more about their computers than the location of the on switch and how they can get to Facebook.
dhimes 10y ago
But as a sword is it any better than hg?

angry-hacker 10y ago

Let's face it, git is only popular because of github. Most the people just use commit and push. All other systems are more user friendly and make more sense. Linus built git for his own needs and that's fine, but in reality git for the majority of devs is not necessary.

jomamaxx 10y ago
"Most the people just use commit and push." And there it is: 'Git' has some amazing things, but 90% of time time, you want to do simple things. Git makes doing the simple, common things hard - and makes doing sophisticated things 'possible'. A 'good product' makes doing the common things 'easy' and the sophisticated things 'possible'. For what git does most of the time - there is absolutely no reason for the obfuscation and complexity. Hence - bad product design.
Shorel 10y ago
It's also popular because it has better performance than all the competition. Most of the time it doesn't matter. But when it matters, it really matters.