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Git is the reference implementation of a protocol, and much like HTTP, you must learn it the hard way if you intend to be a professional in the domain. The mis

Git is the reference implementation of a protocol, and much like HTTP, you must learn it the hard way if you intend to be a professional in the domain. The mistake is to believe there is a U<I|X> in the first place. It does not, however, stop you from using one of the many graphical tools, that are fine for simple usage and will all eventually fall short. You could use a GUI to make complex HTTP routes, through proxies and DNS records via drag&drop, and then one day you'll have some weird DNSSEC error that the maintainer does not care about, and you will have to explain that to whoever is losing money. Acknowledging a problem is not as trivial as it was first thought is critical in our line of work in my opinion.

gcp 10y ago
Git is the reference implementation of a protocol In reality this "reference implementation" is the sole interface 99% of the users use, so the lack of UX is an issue. There are other tools that do it better and right, so insisting that there's any redeeming qualities to git here is being blind to the obvious. There's actual academic research describing git's problems here, for crying out loud.
- glandium 10y ago
  > There's actual academic research describing git's problems here, for crying out loud. And interestingly, all the academic research talks about is the high level UI. Not the underlying data model. > In reality this "reference implementation" is the sole interface 99% of the users use /That/ is the mystery to me. I don't see a reason why a better UX around the same underlying data model, talking to the same server (and thus interacting natively with e.g. github) hasn't picked up. Heck, one could implement mercurial's UX on top of the git data model. In fact, that even has been prototyped. I can't find the repository anymore, but iirc it was somewhere on bitbucket.
  - beagle3 10y ago
    There are at least five such front ends (easygit comes to mind) and extensions (like legit from Kenneth Reitz). But none is popular, and I suspect the reason is that, despite all the complaining, Git's default UI is not actually that bad in day to day use.

gcp 10y ago

Git is the reference implementation of a protocol In reality this "reference implementation" is the sole interface 99% of the users use, so the lack of UX is an issue. There are other tools that do it better and right, so insisting that there's any redeeming qualities to git here is being blind to the obvious. There's actual academic research describing git's problems here, for crying out loud.

glandium 10y ago
> There's actual academic research describing git's problems here, for crying out loud. And interestingly, all the academic research talks about is the high level UI. Not the underlying data model. > In reality this "reference implementation" is the sole interface 99% of the users use /That/ is the mystery to me. I don't see a reason why a better UX around the same underlying data model, talking to the same server (and thus interacting natively with e.g. github) hasn't picked up. Heck, one could implement mercurial's UX on top of the git data model. In fact, that even has been prototyped. I can't find the repository anymore, but iirc it was somewhere on bitbucket.
- beagle3 10y ago
  There are at least five such front ends (easygit comes to mind) and extensions (like legit from Kenneth Reitz). But none is popular, and I suspect the reason is that, despite all the complaining, Git's default UI is not actually that bad in day to day use.