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Like git, we need Linus to come up with totally mindbogglingly simple. I can't tell you how many years we wasted working with stupid/bloated/useless source cont

Like git, we need Linus to come up with totally mindbogglingly simple. I can't tell you how many years we wasted working with stupid/bloated/useless source control systems until git came along.

pmoriarty 10y ago
Have you ever tried "man git"? git is bloated, and certainly anything but simple. It's also arguably stupid in a lot of ways. git is fast, though, and that's one of the main reasons it won over other version control systems which were a lot more elegant and easy to use.
- Peaker 10y ago
  Are you referring to darcs? Git is quite elegant underneath the terrible UI.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    No, I was referring to bzr (formerly called "Bazaar"). There was a really good talk given by one of its lead developers about why it failed, called "Remedies for Frustration".[1] It's well worth reading (make sure to read the slide notes, not just the slides themselves!) and has some great lessons about how the aversion to "premature optimization" can lead to the ruin of a product (in this case, of bzr, which had an elegant UI, but was too slow to compete with git). [1] - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1awg1CHM1w128iOBp_JOxE2DgHfywBeyjDe2bkx1vfVQ https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1awg1CHM1w128iOBp_JOx...
    - Peaker 10y ago
      I don't think git won over bzr just because of speed. It was also much more powerful in meaningful ways (`git reset <hash>`, `git rebase -i`, ...) very early on. Also, the internal git model is elegant. Having used bzr for years, I never understood its internal model.
- ldiracdelta 10y ago
  I agree. Bitkeeper actually has a much better command line user interface and is more intuitive, but free and fast is hard to pass up.
- _asummers 10y ago
  Magit puts an extremely intuitive UI on top of it, and has made git a pleasure to use again, for me.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    I use Magit myself and love it, but it still has a truckload of commands, and to avoid shooting yourself in the foot you have to know what they do (crack open "man git" again), which ones to use and when to use them, and often even how git works in detail under the hood. Magit certainly makes working with git easier and faster, and combined with the power of emacs it makes for a very powerful tool. But it has still been very far from simple or elegant for me, once you get beyond the basics of what git can do. I personally see this as a design problem with git, which a tool like Magit can mitigate but not solve.
- GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
  >git is bloated, and certainly anything but simple. It's also arguably stupid in a lot of ways. Amen. I have to confess that I actually prefer Mercurial to git; it just feels simpler to use.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    I agree. A lot of that comes from the fact that Mercurial's UI is basically "SVN, but as a DVCS", and I like that. I still use Mercurial for my personal projects (using my Linode to push backups to). Then again, I'm also of the heretical position that if you don't need the distributed parts of a DVCS, you should use SVN.
gqvijay 10y ago
git = Asana

Like git, we need Linus to come up with totally mindbogglingly simple. I can't tell you how many years we wasted working with stupid/bloated/useless source control systems until git came along.

pmoriarty 10y ago

Have you ever tried "man git"? git is bloated, and certainly anything but simple. It's also arguably stupid in a lot of ways. git is fast, though, and that's one of the main reasons it won over other version control systems which were a lot more elegant and easy to use.

Peaker 10y ago
Are you referring to darcs? Git is quite elegant underneath the terrible UI.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  No, I was referring to bzr (formerly called "Bazaar"). There was a really good talk given by one of its lead developers about why it failed, called "Remedies for Frustration".[1] It's well worth reading (make sure to read the slide notes, not just the slides themselves!) and has some great lessons about how the aversion to "premature optimization" can lead to the ruin of a product (in this case, of bzr, which had an elegant UI, but was too slow to compete with git). [1] - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1awg1CHM1w128iOBp_JOxE2DgHfywBeyjDe2bkx1vfVQ https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1awg1CHM1w128iOBp_JOx...
  - Peaker 10y ago
    I don't think git won over bzr just because of speed. It was also much more powerful in meaningful ways (`git reset <hash>`, `git rebase -i`, ...) very early on. Also, the internal git model is elegant. Having used bzr for years, I never understood its internal model.
ldiracdelta 10y ago
I agree. Bitkeeper actually has a much better command line user interface and is more intuitive, but free and fast is hard to pass up.
_asummers 10y ago
Magit puts an extremely intuitive UI on top of it, and has made git a pleasure to use again, for me.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  I use Magit myself and love it, but it still has a truckload of commands, and to avoid shooting yourself in the foot you have to know what they do (crack open "man git" again), which ones to use and when to use them, and often even how git works in detail under the hood. Magit certainly makes working with git easier and faster, and combined with the power of emacs it makes for a very powerful tool. But it has still been very far from simple or elegant for me, once you get beyond the basics of what git can do. I personally see this as a design problem with git, which a tool like Magit can mitigate but not solve.
GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
>git is bloated, and certainly anything but simple. It's also arguably stupid in a lot of ways. Amen. I have to confess that I actually prefer Mercurial to git; it just feels simpler to use.
- amyjess 10y ago
  I agree. A lot of that comes from the fact that Mercurial's UI is basically "SVN, but as a DVCS", and I like that. I still use Mercurial for my personal projects (using my Linode to push backups to). Then again, I'm also of the heretical position that if you don't need the distributed parts of a DVCS, you should use SVN.

gqvijay 10y ago

git = Asana