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I would argue git is not novice friendly. It's original intended audience was not lay people learning how to program. It was seasoned kernel developers working

by tenken 9y ago

I would argue git is not novice friendly. It's original intended audience was not lay people learning how to program. It was seasoned kernel developers working on the Linux source tree. It (made) assumption(s) it's userbase were experts in their domain. > Naturally, people get confused and reach for the docs, which are filled with even more newbie-hostile terms like 'tree-ish', 'hunks' and 'refspec'. Yup, these are everyday terms for an expert in computer science and algorithm and software design. If I were a student in medical school I'd expect the books I'm learning from to use the expert terminology of my domain of study when describing the body and functions and not laymans terms such as -- "the hip bone is connected to the Red-Squishy-Thing .... ELI5 me plz" ... I agree git is complex, and can be scary. But building software is a complicated process rife with engineering pitfalls! If one is unable to properly use the Lego building blocks, then stay away :D I do believe when used properly, a productive Git workflow using Branches and sane commit messages can help to give Visibility to your project development life-cycle and help to make an issue or task on a project understandable in scope and difficulty by segmenting ones development work into comprehensible mergable pieces (branches) within the project.

sneak 9y ago
I know a lot of CS experts who go weeks without saying any of “hunks”, “refspec”, or “tree-ish”. You are making excuses for needless, opaque jargon.
- rileymat2 9y ago
  I was a pretty good CS student and do not remember any of those terms outside of git.
  - jwilk 9y ago
    Out of these, only “hunk” is a somewhat common term. “refspec” and “tree-ish” are obscure and git-specific.
masklinn 9y ago
> I would argue git is not novice friendly. Git is not friendly period, it's a huge pile of leaky abstraction and incoherent commands, the "high-level UI" being closer to shortcuts for common sequences of lower-level operations than an actual abstraction. It simply can not be understood "top-down". > It's original intended audience was not lay people learning how to program. It was seasoned kernel developers working on the Linux source tree. It (made) assumption(s) it's userbase were experts in their domain. Domain expertise has nothing to do with it, unless the domain is playing with footguns and expertise is having toes left. > I agree git is complex Git is not complex, it just has a very, very shitty API.
- microtherion 9y ago
  Git and its documentation are a prime example of what languagelog calls "Nerdview": http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=276 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=276 people with any kind of technical knowledge of a domain tend to get hopelessly (and unwittingly) stuck in a frame of reference that relates to their view of the issue, and their trade's technical parlance, not that of the ordinary humans with whom they so signally fail to engage.
  - acqq 9y ago
    Some example of "wrong frame of reference" when "ordinary humans" even include "all other programmers not in his own team": https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110512-00/?p=10683 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110512-00/?p=... I know a few "nerds" like that. They tend to give technically completely correct but misleading or dangerous or simply unusable answers.
  - u801e 9y ago
    Could this principle not also apply to any journal/conference paper? For the most part, one has to have a basic understanding of the field, and read through prior research to have a better understanding of the current problem domain. We don't expect journal papers to be written at an elementary level. But people who make an effort to get themselves up to speed in the area can understand them. The same thing applies to a lot of tools that are used in software development.
jejones3141 9y ago
I've always been puzzled about why programmers aren't considered worthy of tools designed with thought given to user interface.
- masklinn 9y ago
  Because it's hard demanding proper UI when you intuitively know you couldn't build one to save your life, not only does it feel like whining, if it spreads you might be out of a job.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Very few dev tool organizations employ dev-oriented UX designers. It’s mostly the developers and PMs themselves doing UX design, when they have been evaluated and promoted based on other things (coding, project management).

by tenken 9y ago

sneak 9y ago

I know a lot of CS experts who go weeks without saying any of “hunks”, “refspec”, or “tree-ish”. You are making excuses for needless, opaque jargon.

rileymat2 9y ago
I was a pretty good CS student and do not remember any of those terms outside of git.
- jwilk 9y ago
  Out of these, only “hunk” is a somewhat common term. “refspec” and “tree-ish” are obscure and git-specific.

masklinn 9y ago

> I would argue git is not novice friendly. Git is not friendly period, it's a huge pile of leaky abstraction and incoherent commands, the "high-level UI" being closer to shortcuts for common sequences of lower-level operations than an actual abstraction. It simply can not be understood "top-down". > It's original intended audience was not lay people learning how to program. It was seasoned kernel developers working on the Linux source tree. It (made) assumption(s) it's userbase were experts in their domain. Domain expertise has nothing to do with it, unless the domain is playing with footguns and expertise is having toes left. > I agree git is complex Git is not complex, it just has a very, very shitty API.

microtherion 9y ago
Git and its documentation are a prime example of what languagelog calls "Nerdview": http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=276 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=276 people with any kind of technical knowledge of a domain tend to get hopelessly (and unwittingly) stuck in a frame of reference that relates to their view of the issue, and their trade's technical parlance, not that of the ordinary humans with whom they so signally fail to engage.
- acqq 9y ago
  Some example of "wrong frame of reference" when "ordinary humans" even include "all other programmers not in his own team": https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110512-00/?p=10683 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110512-00/?p=... I know a few "nerds" like that. They tend to give technically completely correct but misleading or dangerous or simply unusable answers.
- u801e 9y ago
  Could this principle not also apply to any journal/conference paper? For the most part, one has to have a basic understanding of the field, and read through prior research to have a better understanding of the current problem domain. We don't expect journal papers to be written at an elementary level. But people who make an effort to get themselves up to speed in the area can understand them. The same thing applies to a lot of tools that are used in software development.

jejones3141 9y ago

I've always been puzzled about why programmers aren't considered worthy of tools designed with thought given to user interface.

masklinn 9y ago
Because it's hard demanding proper UI when you intuitively know you couldn't build one to save your life, not only does it feel like whining, if it spreads you might be out of a job.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Very few dev tool organizations employ dev-oriented UX designers. It’s mostly the developers and PMs themselves doing UX design, when they have been evaluated and promoted based on other things (coding, project management).