Linus's initial commit of git makes it easier to see its essential simplicity: http://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca2e25604af290 http://

Linus's initial commit of git makes it easier to see its essential simplicity: http://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca2e25604af290 http://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23c... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8650483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8650483 Content-addressing (ie hashes) enables decentralization (hashes are the same whereever you are) and integrity (changing content will change the hash). (Perhaps inspired by Tridge, who did rsync which uses hashes to test for content changes?) It's incredibly fast because commits are almost as simple as copying, and because Linus knows how to C. Linus left out some features, like renames (which bitkeeper has), so this simple idea would be enough. Some people rave about the index/cache, though it's separable from the core idea.