5 ms·

We hired a new grad last year... he's very sharp, though of course inexperienced when it comes to working as part of a team on a large project (but time will fi

by jcadam 10y ago

We hired a new grad last year... he's very sharp, though of course inexperienced when it comes to working as part of a team on a large project (but time will fix that). Now, I have no idea how this is possible, but he has deeper knowledge of Hg and Git than anyone I've ever met (If your experience is limited to school and solo personal projects, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of version control? On my personal projects, I rarely need anything more than git add/commit/push/pull and basic branching). I'm over 10 years older than this guy, but I find myself asking his advice whenever I need to do something advanced or out of the ordinary with Git.

6DM 10y ago
I personally learned better on side projects instead of homework. This usually led to my grades suffering :( However, on the up side, I gained more knowledge on Flex at the time than even my professor. I liked working with it and really dug into it. I'm glad I did becuase I when I ran out of money for school, my reputation got me a few gigs that helped me make it to the end. That guy is probably smarter than me and both dug into git and was diligent in his homework. Those kind of people can have some really deep knowledge on areas they care about.
UK-AL 10y ago
Different generation. The new generation has grew up on social coding on GitHub.
lmm 10y ago
Fancy git is still useful on personal projects - if anything it's more so, e.g. you can rewrite history without worrying about other people using it. I think a lot of people who remember a time when committing was expensive are stuck in that mentality, whereas if you commit every 5 minutes you'll naturally end up using the more advanced features to organize your work.
- jcadam 10y ago
  I'm getting better about committing more often (unlike back in the days of SVN/ClearCase/etc.), but I'm still not quite up to committing several times a day like these kids are wont to do :)
  - shostack 10y ago
    I wonder if there is any correlation between commit frequency and a person's tweet or FB post frequency. Are people more active on social networks more likely to carry that over and commit more often?
    - wott 10y ago
      It's funny you mention that, because I have developed the same feeling, although I have no idea if it holds true or not.
    - aninhumer 10y ago
      Well I commit relatively frequently and post on twitter/facebook approximately never, so make of that what you will. More generally I don't see the connection? I'm not making commits to show off my cool code to my colleagues. I'm making commits in case I want to revert specific changes later. I learn to commit more frequently every time I realise I need to undo something manually because my history is insufficiently granular.
    - lmm 10y ago
      For me if anything it's the opposite. I blog rarely, because I spend a while thinking over my posts and getting them right. (That said, I commit frequently even there, because I maintain my blog in git).
  - kwhitefoot 10y ago
    I don't use git at work, we use TFS instead. I commit to the build server as soon as I have something that is a complete step in the process of developing a feature or fixing a bug especially if that step carries a risk of breaking something. The build server then builds the whole application and runs the unit tests. I might do this once a day if I'm mostly thinking rather than furiously typing or ten times a day if it is all flowing perfectly. It's not just the kids who do this, I'll be 61 in a couple of months. On the other hand one of my colleagues who really is half my age prefers to complete the feature and only commit to the build server once the whole feature is complete. He uses TFS shelvesets to make sure he won't lose anything.
pacala 10y ago
Deep knowledge of git is a sign of immaturity :) There are literally 10 commands one will ever need, which can be conveniently aliased to something more sane. Keep the brain space for something that produces higher value add.
- copperx 10y ago
  Some day you will be caught in a corner case and you'll spend half a day learning about git's internals.
  - alexbanks 10y ago
    Which I've always thought was a sign of mediocre software, but HN/Reddit seems to crucify those that criticize git. I think Git is like Javascript, it takes relatively little time to learn enough to get up and running, causing most people to forgoe learning all they'll actually need to be successful.
  - pacala 10y ago
    I've been using git for 7 years now, never had the need to go deeper. Lately, I'm using github and pushing / saving my work every so often [kind of like CTRL + S in Windows Office in the '90s]. If something goes wrong, happy to yank the local git and start with a fresh clone from github :)
    - mixmastamyk 10y ago
      https://www.xkcd.com/1597/ https://www.xkcd.com/1597/
- teej 10y ago
  Ehh, I've been in situations where I screwed up so bad I had to find the "person who actually knows Git" come and save me. Let the kid go deep into whatever they want. Maybe having useful knowledge that others don't drives that person to like coding and makes it fun for them.
- thesmallestcat 10y ago
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
hen I do something 'for work' its just that, work. I'm not going to spend my nights and weekends on it or learning the finer points of it. I have other responsibilities and am way past the age where I'm deeply curious about technology and have to 'get it' on a deep level to feel satisfied or competitive. When you're a student and hobbyist, you have all these things. If your curious, then you have the time to fulfill that curiosity. I also suspect the young coders today are all about github so knowing git's in's and out's is going to be natural for them.
thesimpsons1022 10y ago
one of my friends was really into doing fancy git stuff for no reason. he knew a lot. but I'll never forget that one time he was trying to do some crazy fancy stuff and accidentaly deleted our local changes for our OS project... Truth is most of it is unneeded.
thesimpsons1022 10y ago
one of my friends was really into doing fancy git stuff for no reason. he knew a lot. but I'll never forget that one time he was trying to do some crazy fancy stuff and accidentaly deleted our local changes for our OS project... Truth is most of it is unneeded.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> If your experience is limited to school and solo personal projects, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of version control? If your experience is limited to university and programming for work, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of... well, anything? That is - is that new grad perchance a hobbyist programmer? When you do this stuff for fun and without deadline pressure, especially when young and thus having ample free time, it's much easier to actually learn stuff, and to develop deep understanding of it. Adult life and commercial pressures really go a long way to make people avoid understanding things they work with - after all, we're not being paid to comprehend the tech deeply, we're paid to achieve business goals.
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> We hired a new grad last year [...] Now, I have no idea how this is possible, but he has deeper knowledge of Hg and Git than anyone I've ever met (If your experience is limited to school and solo personal projects, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of version control? I learned Linux in the '90s, when it came on a stack of floppies, long before anyone else would have thought to use it in production. It was never more than a pet project, but I kept hammering it because it was so cool. Unlimited size matrices. Compile the kernel any way I want. A real multi-user OS? Holy smokes, this is a very cool hobby. Eventually I got a job at a startup that was running all their stuff on Linux. Lo and behold, I was the local "Linux expert", blowing everyone else out of the water with my knowledge of, well, everything needed to make that thing work. So that's how it happens. If you like something, and you're passionate about it, and you have an obsessive streak, you'll jump lightyears ahead in a very short time. The Git guy probably spent countless hours figuring out obscure aspects of the tool's workflow, just for the heck of it. Deep interest + focus + long practice = mastery. > On my personal projects, I rarely need anything more than git add/commit/push/pull and basic branching) Neither did he, strictly speaking, but the difference is that he kept hammering it. So you see, this is not about generational differences. This is good old fashion geeks doing what geeks do best.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  > So that's how it happens. If you like something, and you're passionate about it, and you have an obsessive streak, you'll jump lightyears ahead in a very short time. You forgot lots and lots of free time . Time like that you simply don't have as an adult.
  - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
    That's a good point.

by jcadam 10y ago

6DM 10y ago

I personally learned better on side projects instead of homework. This usually led to my grades suffering :( However, on the up side, I gained more knowledge on Flex at the time than even my professor. I liked working with it and really dug into it. I'm glad I did becuase I when I ran out of money for school, my reputation got me a few gigs that helped me make it to the end. That guy is probably smarter than me and both dug into git and was diligent in his homework. Those kind of people can have some really deep knowledge on areas they care about.

UK-AL 10y ago

Different generation. The new generation has grew up on social coding on GitHub.

lmm 10y ago

Fancy git is still useful on personal projects - if anything it's more so, e.g. you can rewrite history without worrying about other people using it. I think a lot of people who remember a time when committing was expensive are stuck in that mentality, whereas if you commit every 5 minutes you'll naturally end up using the more advanced features to organize your work.

jcadam 10y ago
I'm getting better about committing more often (unlike back in the days of SVN/ClearCase/etc.), but I'm still not quite up to committing several times a day like these kids are wont to do :)
- shostack 10y ago
  I wonder if there is any correlation between commit frequency and a person's tweet or FB post frequency. Are people more active on social networks more likely to carry that over and commit more often?
  - wott 10y ago
    It's funny you mention that, because I have developed the same feeling, although I have no idea if it holds true or not.
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    Well I commit relatively frequently and post on twitter/facebook approximately never, so make of that what you will. More generally I don't see the connection? I'm not making commits to show off my cool code to my colleagues. I'm making commits in case I want to revert specific changes later. I learn to commit more frequently every time I realise I need to undo something manually because my history is insufficiently granular.
  - lmm 10y ago
    For me if anything it's the opposite. I blog rarely, because I spend a while thinking over my posts and getting them right. (That said, I commit frequently even there, because I maintain my blog in git).
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  I don't use git at work, we use TFS instead. I commit to the build server as soon as I have something that is a complete step in the process of developing a feature or fixing a bug especially if that step carries a risk of breaking something. The build server then builds the whole application and runs the unit tests. I might do this once a day if I'm mostly thinking rather than furiously typing or ten times a day if it is all flowing perfectly. It's not just the kids who do this, I'll be 61 in a couple of months. On the other hand one of my colleagues who really is half my age prefers to complete the feature and only commit to the build server once the whole feature is complete. He uses TFS shelvesets to make sure he won't lose anything.

pacala 10y ago

Deep knowledge of git is a sign of immaturity :) There are literally 10 commands one will ever need, which can be conveniently aliased to something more sane. Keep the brain space for something that produces higher value add.

copperx 10y ago
Some day you will be caught in a corner case and you'll spend half a day learning about git's internals.
- alexbanks 10y ago
  Which I've always thought was a sign of mediocre software, but HN/Reddit seems to crucify those that criticize git. I think Git is like Javascript, it takes relatively little time to learn enough to get up and running, causing most people to forgoe learning all they'll actually need to be successful.
- pacala 10y ago
  I've been using git for 7 years now, never had the need to go deeper. Lately, I'm using github and pushing / saving my work every so often [kind of like CTRL + S in Windows Office in the '90s]. If something goes wrong, happy to yank the local git and start with a fresh clone from github :)
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago
    https://www.xkcd.com/1597/ https://www.xkcd.com/1597/
teej 10y ago
Ehh, I've been in situations where I screwed up so bad I had to find the "person who actually knows Git" come and save me. Let the kid go deep into whatever they want. Maybe having useful knowledge that others don't drives that person to like coding and makes it fun for them.
thesmallestcat 10y ago

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

hen I do something 'for work' its just that, work. I'm not going to spend my nights and weekends on it or learning the finer points of it. I have other responsibilities and am way past the age where I'm deeply curious about technology and have to 'get it' on a deep level to feel satisfied or competitive. When you're a student and hobbyist, you have all these things. If your curious, then you have the time to fulfill that curiosity. I also suspect the young coders today are all about github so knowing git's in's and out's is going to be natural for them.

thesimpsons1022 10y ago

one of my friends was really into doing fancy git stuff for no reason. he knew a lot. but I'll never forget that one time he was trying to do some crazy fancy stuff and accidentaly deleted our local changes for our OS project... Truth is most of it is unneeded.

thesimpsons1022 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> If your experience is limited to school and solo personal projects, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of version control? If your experience is limited to university and programming for work, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of... well, anything? That is - is that new grad perchance a hobbyist programmer? When you do this stuff for fun and without deadline pressure, especially when young and thus having ample free time, it's much easier to actually learn stuff, and to develop deep understanding of it. Adult life and commercial pressures really go a long way to make people avoid understanding things they work with - after all, we're not being paid to comprehend the tech deeply, we're paid to achieve business goals.

Florin_Andrei 10y ago

> We hired a new grad last year [...] Now, I have no idea how this is possible, but he has deeper knowledge of Hg and Git than anyone I've ever met (If your experience is limited to school and solo personal projects, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of version control? I learned Linux in the '90s, when it came on a stack of floppies, long before anyone else would have thought to use it in production. It was never more than a pet project, but I kept hammering it because it was so cool. Unlimited size matrices. Compile the kernel any way I want. A real multi-user OS? Holy smokes, this is a very cool hobby. Eventually I got a job at a startup that was running all their stuff on Linux. Lo and behold, I was the local "Linux expert", blowing everyone else out of the water with my knowledge of, well, everything needed to make that thing work. So that's how it happens. If you like something, and you're passionate about it, and you have an obsessive streak, you'll jump lightyears ahead in a very short time. The Git guy probably spent countless hours figuring out obscure aspects of the tool's workflow, just for the heck of it. Deep interest + focus + long practice = mastery. > On my personal projects, I rarely need anything more than git add/commit/push/pull and basic branching) Neither did he, strictly speaking, but the difference is that he kept hammering it. So you see, this is not about generational differences. This is good old fashion geeks doing what geeks do best.

antisthenes 10y ago
> So that's how it happens. If you like something, and you're passionate about it, and you have an obsessive streak, you'll jump lightyears ahead in a very short time. You forgot lots and lots of free time . Time like that you simply don't have as an adult.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  That's a good point.