3 ms·

I started using Mercurial in college and then switched to git at my first job. I haven't seen Mercurial since. I still don't understand how Git won in the long

by mmmeff 7y ago

I started using Mercurial in college and then switched to git at my first job. I haven't seen Mercurial since. I still don't understand how Git won in the long run, it's CLI is so much worse than `hg`. My guess would be that Bitbucket added `git` support before Github added `hg` support.

omosubi 7y ago
Why is the mercurial interface better than git? They're pretty similar in most cases besides the branching thing and a couple different commands
- Lowkeyloki 7y ago
  Mercurial's interface makes more sense if you're migrating from a svn workflow, for example.
- jstewartmobile 7y ago
  99% of the time, I can get away with: hg push/pull/up/commit/diff/status without additional flags. I can't say the same for git.
Lowkeyloki 7y ago
Git made some design decisions that sacrifice usability for speed when you're dealing with a gigantic repository on the scale of the Linux kernel, which is what it was designed for. I believe that git won out over mercurial for the same reason that small start ups choose systems and processes that are the same as those used by big players like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. People should try to make design decisions and choose tools for the scale they're actually at. Not the scale they hope to be at some day.
- praneshp 7y ago
  > People should try to make design decisions and choose tools for the scale they're actually at. Not the scale they hope to be at some day. Would you accept that there is at least some sort of movement of engineers from these large companies to startups? I would argue the choice is made on what people are used to and familiar with, as opposed to "let's signal what scale we want to be at in our choice of tools"
  - Lowkeyloki 7y ago
    That hasn't been my experience in a decade in the industry. I've never worked at a company with a single person who has worked at any of the big silicon valley tech companies. But I've seen people choose technologies, tools, designs, and processes because that's what company X uses. None of the companies I've worked at have been even a tenth of the size of Google or Facebook. None of the companies has had one one hundredth of the amount of activity in their repositories that you'd find in the Linux kernel.
- jstewartmobile 7y ago
  Not sure if this is still the case, but Google & FB circa 2010 is still a metric shitload of code: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228399

by mmmeff 7y ago

omosubi 7y ago

Why is the mercurial interface better than git? They're pretty similar in most cases besides the branching thing and a couple different commands

Lowkeyloki 7y ago
Mercurial's interface makes more sense if you're migrating from a svn workflow, for example.
jstewartmobile 7y ago
99% of the time, I can get away with: hg push/pull/up/commit/diff/status without additional flags. I can't say the same for git.

Lowkeyloki 7y ago

Git made some design decisions that sacrifice usability for speed when you're dealing with a gigantic repository on the scale of the Linux kernel, which is what it was designed for. I believe that git won out over mercurial for the same reason that small start ups choose systems and processes that are the same as those used by big players like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. People should try to make design decisions and choose tools for the scale they're actually at. Not the scale they hope to be at some day.

praneshp 7y ago
> People should try to make design decisions and choose tools for the scale they're actually at. Not the scale they hope to be at some day. Would you accept that there is at least some sort of movement of engineers from these large companies to startups? I would argue the choice is made on what people are used to and familiar with, as opposed to "let's signal what scale we want to be at in our choice of tools"
- Lowkeyloki 7y ago
  That hasn't been my experience in a decade in the industry. I've never worked at a company with a single person who has worked at any of the big silicon valley tech companies. But I've seen people choose technologies, tools, designs, and processes because that's what company X uses. None of the companies I've worked at have been even a tenth of the size of Google or Facebook. None of the companies has had one one hundredth of the amount of activity in their repositories that you'd find in the Linux kernel.
jstewartmobile 7y ago
Not sure if this is still the case, but Google & FB circa 2010 is still a metric shitload of code: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228399