3 ms·

My perspective is this. I am a quite experiance CNC operator and have used this particular model for over a decade. I don’t have a problem with it, even though

My perspective is this. I am a quite experiance CNC operator and have used this particular model for over a decade. I don’t have a problem with it, even though I admit it took a bit of getting used to originally and I still agree that the controls aren’t intuitive, but that doesn’t matter to me cause I know them by heart... but now I’m running a shop with 5 other CNC operators who constantly break the machine and shut down work for trivial completely non problems like John used Peters Machine and now Peter is back so John is back on his own machine, suddenly none is able to turn on their machines so they’ve all started cutting out parts by hand. So I’m spending tons of time dealing with complete bullshit things that would not otherwise have been a problem had it not been for this particular brand of CNC. It doesn’t matter how well I personally know the machine, because the problem is that I’m now wasting my time trying to prevent them from wasting theirs. This is not a problem of inexperienced operators, it’s a problem with a machine that only works with the aid of a super-user, and which doesn’t easily show the path of how people should develop super-user abilities without breaking stuff and working really hard to understand what they broke and why before they can move on to fix it. Thank god I’ve never had to deal with a CNC machine like that. But git is that machine. Secretly I think this is the true reason for gits popularity. It’s like vim, a wonderful tool once you get past the first hill, but I would never force a whole team to use vim, I know it would be a disaster productivity wise. But because of gits popularity it is indeed forced on almost every developer.

cyphar 8y ago
> But git is that machine. Secretly I think this is the true reason for its popularity. I think it became popular because it was written to solve the needs of the largest collaborative project in the history of mankind (Linux). It was objectively better for that job than any other tool that was available at the time (and thus for many such collaborative projects), and that's where the popularity came from. Now, does it have warts? Yes. I don't agree that it requires very detailed knowledge to use effectively (if I was able to figure it out as a high-school student, I'm certain that it's not beyond the majority of developers). I think it's just that many developers don't feel the need to learn how to use their tools effectively, and if a tool isn't as-easy-as-possible for simple tasks (which I will admit is the case for Git -- the index concept appears to really throw people off) then it is seen as being "too hard". In your scenario, using a CNC machine is a key part of their jobs as CNC operators -- so I would expect that learning how to use the CNC machine they use for their job would be an important part of working there. Similarly, developers who use git daily (and is a central part of their work) really should put the time into learning how to use it effectively (it wouldn't take more than a weekend with the right resources). I don't think it's reasonable to say that a developer whose job it is to use git should not have any burden to learn how to use their tools, and that it's the tools fault for being hard to use. I don't disagree that the on-boarding with git and some of the UX (such as stashing) is quite bad. But it's nowhere near as hard as people make out, and at the end of the day if you want to use something you should learn how to use it -- just because you can get it to somewhat work after 10 minutes of bashing at your keyboard doesn't mean you shouldn't spend the few extra hours to actually understand what you're doing. git is a transferable skill, and the time taken to learn how to use it pays off very quickly.

cyphar 8y ago

> But git is that machine. Secretly I think this is the true reason for its popularity. I think it became popular because it was written to solve the needs of the largest collaborative project in the history of mankind (Linux). It was objectively better for that job than any other tool that was available at the time (and thus for many such collaborative projects), and that's where the popularity came from. Now, does it have warts? Yes. I don't agree that it requires very detailed knowledge to use effectively (if I was able to figure it out as a high-school student, I'm certain that it's not beyond the majority of developers). I think it's just that many developers don't feel the need to learn how to use their tools effectively, and if a tool isn't as-easy-as-possible for simple tasks (which I will admit is the case for Git -- the index concept appears to really throw people off) then it is seen as being "too hard". In your scenario, using a CNC machine is a key part of their jobs as CNC operators -- so I would expect that learning how to use the CNC machine they use for their job would be an important part of working there. Similarly, developers who use git daily (and is a central part of their work) really should put the time into learning how to use it effectively (it wouldn't take more than a weekend with the right resources). I don't think it's reasonable to say that a developer whose job it is to use git should not have any burden to learn how to use their tools, and that it's the tools fault for being hard to use. I don't disagree that the on-boarding with git and some of the UX (such as stashing) is quite bad. But it's nowhere near as hard as people make out, and at the end of the day if you want to use something you should learn how to use it -- just because you can get it to somewhat work after 10 minutes of bashing at your keyboard doesn't mean you shouldn't spend the few extra hours to actually understand what you're doing. git is a transferable skill, and the time taken to learn how to use it pays off very quickly.