5 ms·

Sure, and a piece table is a simple way to represent a file's contents. But if anyone wrote a shell or a text editor that required you to directly interact wit

Sure, and a piece table is a simple way to represent a file's contents. But if anyone wrote a shell or a text editor that required you to directly interact with the piece table to edit a file—instead of something sane—then they'd rightfully be called out on it. It wouldn't matter how much you argued about how simple the piece table is to understand, and it wouldn't matter how right you were about how simple the piece table is to understand. It's the wrong level of abstraction to expose in the UI.

kadenshep 8y ago
The only thing Git can really fix is changing it's command flags to be consistent across aliases/internal commands. That's about it. The whole point of an SCM is that graph that you want to move away from. People have asserted your claim many times but can't ever give specific things to fix about the "abstraction." There are about 5/6 fundamental operations you do in git/hg. If that's too much then again, there's not an abstraction that is going to help you out.
- carussell 8y ago
  See, you're trying to foist a position on me that isn't mine—that I'm scared of the essential necessities of source control. And you act as if source control were invented with Git. Neither of these are true. > git/hg Mercurial was a great solution to the same problem that Git set out to tackle, virtually free of Git's foibles. The tradeoff was a few minor foibles of its own, but a much better tool. It's a fucking shame that Git managed to suck all the air out of the room, and we're left with a far, far worse industry standard.
  - kadenshep 8y ago
    >you're trying to foist a position on me that isn't mine I just said you can't give specifics on what to change, because there isn't much too change. >And you act as if source control were invented with Git No I'm not? >and we're left with a far, far worse industry standard. Yeah, we definitely should have gone with the system that can't do partial checkouts correctly or even roll things back. Branching name conflicts across remote repositories and bookmark fun! Git won for a reason, because it's good and sane at what it does.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      That reason was called Linus and Linux kernel development. The master can do no wrong.
      - AstralStorm 8y ago
        No, the reason is mercurial sucked at performance with many commits at the time, and was extra slow when merging. Lacked a few dubious features such as merging multiple branches at the same time too. It has improved but git is still noticeably more efficient with large repositories. (Almost straight comparison is any operation on Firefox repository vs its git port.)
        pjmlp 8y ago
        Mercurial has always been better than Git on Windows. Those dubious features are so relevant to daily work that I didn't even knew they existed.
        AstralStorm 8y ago
        Git main target is Linux. Obviously. Performance on the truly secondary platform was not relevant and it is mostly caused by slow lstat call. Instead Mercurial uses additional cache file which instead is slower on Linux with big repos. But happens to be faster in Windows. And the octopus merge is used by kernel maintainers sometimes if not quite a lot. That feature is impossible to add in Mercurial as it does not allow more than two commit parents.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        Which reinforces the position that git should have stayed a Linux kernel specific DVCS, as the Bitkeeper replacement it is, instead of forcing its use cases on the rest of us.
        kadenshep 8y ago
  - Grue3 8y ago
    >Mercurial was a great solution to the same problem that Git set out to tackle, virtually free of Git's foibles. No, Mercurial's design is fundamentally inferior to Git, and practically the entire history of Mercurial development is trying to catch up to what Git did right from the start. For example having ridiculous "permanent" branches -> somebody makes "bookmarks" plugin to imitate Git's lightweight branches -> now there are two ways to branch, which is confusing. No way to stash -> somebody writes a shelve plugin -> need to enable plugin for this basic functionality instead of being proper part of VCS. Editing local history is hard -> Mercurial Queues plugin -> it's still hard -> now I think they have something like "phases". In Git all of this was easy from the start. Another simple thing. How to get the commit id of the current revision. Let's search stack overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2485651/print-current-mercurial-revision-hash https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2485651/print-current-me... The top answer is `hg id -i`. $ hg id -i adc56745e928 The problem is, this answer is wrong! This simple command can execute for hours on a large enough repository, and requires write privileges to the repository! Moreover, it returns only a part of the hash. There's literally no option to display the full hash. The "correct" answer is `hg parent --template '{node}'`. Except `hg parent` is apparently deprecated, so the actual correct way is some `hg log` invocation with a lot of arguments.
    - baud147258 8y ago
      I would not call "hg log -r tip" a lot of arguments. Also, on the git/hg debate, I feel I've had problems (like the stash your modification and redownload everything) more often with git that hg. I mean perhaps it tells something about my capability to understand a directed acyclic graph, but hg seems less brittle when I'm using it.
    - renox 8y ago
      I disagree with some of your comments, is git stash really essential or unneeded complexity? That's debatable, I never use it personally. What I don't like in git is the loss of history associated with squashing commits, I would prefer having a 'summary' that would keep the full history but by default would ne used like a single commit.
      - 8y ago
- eesmith 8y ago
  You wrote: People have asserted your claim many times but can't ever give specific things to fix about the "abstraction." That seems like you made an assertion as well. I think there are counter-examples. For example, the point of gitless is (quoting http://gitless.com/ http://gitless.com/ ): > Many people complain that Git is hard to use. We think the problem lies deeper than the user interface, in the concepts underlying Git. Gitless is an experiment to see what happens if you put a simple veneer on an app that changes the underlying concepts Some commentary is at https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/10/24/whats-wrong-with-git-a-conceptual-design-analysis/ https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/10/24/whats-wrong-with-git-a-c... . Many HN discussions as well, including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6927485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6927485 .
- chriswarbo 8y ago
  > The whole point of an SCM is that graph that you want to move away from. I think that's an exaggeration. For example, Darcs and Pijul aren't based around a "graph of commits" like Git is, they use sets of inter-dependent patches instead. I'm sure there are other useful ways to model DVCS too. Whilst this is mostly irrelevant for Git users, you mentioned Mercurial so I thought I'd chime in :) > The only thing Git can really fix is changing it's command flags to be consistent across aliases/internal commands. I mostly agree with this: Git is widespread enough that it should mostly be kept stable; anything too drastic should be done in a separate project, either an "overlay", or a separate (possibly Git-compatible) DVCS.
  - kadenshep 8y ago
    >For example, Darcs and Pijul aren't based around a "graph of commits" like Git is, they use sets of inter-dependent patches instead. I said graph, I didn't say which graph. Both systems still use graphs. And still a graph you have to understand how to edit with each tool. The abstraction is still the same, and if you have problems with Git, you're going to have problems with either of those tools as well. The abstraction is not the problem, it's the developers inability to conceptualize the model in their head. Where is the exaggeration?
    - chriswarbo 8y ago
      > I said graph, I didn't say which graph You said "that graph" which, in context, I took to mean the git graph. > Both systems still use graphs True > The abstraction is still the same Not at all, since those graphs mean different things. Each makes some things easier and some things harder. For example, time is easy in git ("what did this look like last week?"). Changes are easy in Darcs ("does this conflict with that?"). Both tools allow the same sorts of things, but some are more natural than others. I think it's easy enough to use either as long as we think in its terms; learning to think in those terms may be hard. For git in particular, I think the CLI terminology doesn't help with that (e.g. "checkout"). > if you have problems with Git, you're going to have problems with either of those tools as well Not necessarily. As a simple example, some git operations "replay" a sequence of commits (e.g. cherrypicking). I've often had sequences which introduce something then later remove it (bugs, workarounds, stubs, etc.). If there's a merge conflict during the "replay", I'll have to spend time manually reintroducing those useless changes, just so i can resume the "replay" which will remove them again. From what I understand, in Darcs such changes would "cancel out" and not appear in the diff that we end up applying. > Where is the exaggeration? The idea that "uses a graph" implies "equally hard to use". The underlying datastructure != the abstraction; the semantics is much more important. For example, the forward/back buttons of a browser can be implemented as a linked list; blockchains are also linked lists, but that doesn't mean that they're both the same abstraction, or that understanding each takes the same level of knowledge/experience/etc.

kadenshep 8y ago

The only thing Git can really fix is changing it's command flags to be consistent across aliases/internal commands. That's about it. The whole point of an SCM is that graph that you want to move away from. People have asserted your claim many times but can't ever give specific things to fix about the "abstraction." There are about 5/6 fundamental operations you do in git/hg. If that's too much then again, there's not an abstraction that is going to help you out.

carussell 8y ago
See, you're trying to foist a position on me that isn't mine—that I'm scared of the essential necessities of source control. And you act as if source control were invented with Git. Neither of these are true. > git/hg Mercurial was a great solution to the same problem that Git set out to tackle, virtually free of Git's foibles. The tradeoff was a few minor foibles of its own, but a much better tool. It's a fucking shame that Git managed to suck all the air out of the room, and we're left with a far, far worse industry standard.
- kadenshep 8y ago
  >you're trying to foist a position on me that isn't mine I just said you can't give specifics on what to change, because there isn't much too change. >And you act as if source control were invented with Git No I'm not? >and we're left with a far, far worse industry standard. Yeah, we definitely should have gone with the system that can't do partial checkouts correctly or even roll things back. Branching name conflicts across remote repositories and bookmark fun! Git won for a reason, because it's good and sane at what it does.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    That reason was called Linus and Linux kernel development. The master can do no wrong.
    - AstralStorm 8y ago
      No, the reason is mercurial sucked at performance with many commits at the time, and was extra slow when merging. Lacked a few dubious features such as merging multiple branches at the same time too. It has improved but git is still noticeably more efficient with large repositories. (Almost straight comparison is any operation on Firefox repository vs its git port.)
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        Mercurial has always been better than Git on Windows. Those dubious features are so relevant to daily work that I didn't even knew they existed.
        AstralStorm 8y ago
        Git main target is Linux. Obviously. Performance on the truly secondary platform was not relevant and it is mostly caused by slow lstat call. Instead Mercurial uses additional cache file which instead is slower on Linux with big repos. But happens to be faster in Windows. And the octopus merge is used by kernel maintainers sometimes if not quite a lot. That feature is impossible to add in Mercurial as it does not allow more than two commit parents.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        Which reinforces the position that git should have stayed a Linux kernel specific DVCS, as the Bitkeeper replacement it is, instead of forcing its use cases on the rest of us.
        kadenshep 8y ago
- Grue3 8y ago
  >Mercurial was a great solution to the same problem that Git set out to tackle, virtually free of Git's foibles. No, Mercurial's design is fundamentally inferior to Git, and practically the entire history of Mercurial development is trying to catch up to what Git did right from the start. For example having ridiculous "permanent" branches -> somebody makes "bookmarks" plugin to imitate Git's lightweight branches -> now there are two ways to branch, which is confusing. No way to stash -> somebody writes a shelve plugin -> need to enable plugin for this basic functionality instead of being proper part of VCS. Editing local history is hard -> Mercurial Queues plugin -> it's still hard -> now I think they have something like "phases". In Git all of this was easy from the start. Another simple thing. How to get the commit id of the current revision. Let's search stack overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2485651/print-current-mercurial-revision-hash https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2485651/print-current-me... The top answer is `hg id -i`. $ hg id -i adc56745e928 The problem is, this answer is wrong! This simple command can execute for hours on a large enough repository, and requires write privileges to the repository! Moreover, it returns only a part of the hash. There's literally no option to display the full hash. The "correct" answer is `hg parent --template '{node}'`. Except `hg parent` is apparently deprecated, so the actual correct way is some `hg log` invocation with a lot of arguments.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    I would not call "hg log -r tip" a lot of arguments. Also, on the git/hg debate, I feel I've had problems (like the stash your modification and redownload everything) more often with git that hg. I mean perhaps it tells something about my capability to understand a directed acyclic graph, but hg seems less brittle when I'm using it.
  - renox 8y ago
    I disagree with some of your comments, is git stash really essential or unneeded complexity? That's debatable, I never use it personally. What I don't like in git is the loss of history associated with squashing commits, I would prefer having a 'summary' that would keep the full history but by default would ne used like a single commit.
    - 8y ago
eesmith 8y ago
You wrote: People have asserted your claim many times but can't ever give specific things to fix about the "abstraction." That seems like you made an assertion as well. I think there are counter-examples. For example, the point of gitless is (quoting http://gitless.com/ http://gitless.com/ ): > Many people complain that Git is hard to use. We think the problem lies deeper than the user interface, in the concepts underlying Git. Gitless is an experiment to see what happens if you put a simple veneer on an app that changes the underlying concepts Some commentary is at https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/10/24/whats-wrong-with-git-a-conceptual-design-analysis/ https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/10/24/whats-wrong-with-git-a-c... . Many HN discussions as well, including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6927485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6927485 .
chriswarbo 8y ago
> The whole point of an SCM is that graph that you want to move away from. I think that's an exaggeration. For example, Darcs and Pijul aren't based around a "graph of commits" like Git is, they use sets of inter-dependent patches instead. I'm sure there are other useful ways to model DVCS too. Whilst this is mostly irrelevant for Git users, you mentioned Mercurial so I thought I'd chime in :) > The only thing Git can really fix is changing it's command flags to be consistent across aliases/internal commands. I mostly agree with this: Git is widespread enough that it should mostly be kept stable; anything too drastic should be done in a separate project, either an "overlay", or a separate (possibly Git-compatible) DVCS.
- kadenshep 8y ago
  >For example, Darcs and Pijul aren't based around a "graph of commits" like Git is, they use sets of inter-dependent patches instead. I said graph, I didn't say which graph. Both systems still use graphs. And still a graph you have to understand how to edit with each tool. The abstraction is still the same, and if you have problems with Git, you're going to have problems with either of those tools as well. The abstraction is not the problem, it's the developers inability to conceptualize the model in their head. Where is the exaggeration?
  - chriswarbo 8y ago
    > I said graph, I didn't say which graph You said "that graph" which, in context, I took to mean the git graph. > Both systems still use graphs True > The abstraction is still the same Not at all, since those graphs mean different things. Each makes some things easier and some things harder. For example, time is easy in git ("what did this look like last week?"). Changes are easy in Darcs ("does this conflict with that?"). Both tools allow the same sorts of things, but some are more natural than others. I think it's easy enough to use either as long as we think in its terms; learning to think in those terms may be hard. For git in particular, I think the CLI terminology doesn't help with that (e.g. "checkout"). > if you have problems with Git, you're going to have problems with either of those tools as well Not necessarily. As a simple example, some git operations "replay" a sequence of commits (e.g. cherrypicking). I've often had sequences which introduce something then later remove it (bugs, workarounds, stubs, etc.). If there's a merge conflict during the "replay", I'll have to spend time manually reintroducing those useless changes, just so i can resume the "replay" which will remove them again. From what I understand, in Darcs such changes would "cancel out" and not appear in the diff that we end up applying. > Where is the exaggeration? The idea that "uses a graph" implies "equally hard to use". The underlying datastructure != the abstraction; the semantics is much more important. For example, the forward/back buttons of a browser can be implemented as a linked list; blockchains are also linked lists, but that doesn't mean that they're both the same abstraction, or that understanding each takes the same level of knowledge/experience/etc.