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Git and Mercurial were both originally developed over the course of a month or so. If DVCS really results in an order-of-magnitude improvement (which do I find

Git and Mercurial were both originally developed over the course of a month or so. If DVCS really results in an order-of-magnitude improvement (which do I find credible), then I think it qualifies as a silver bullet by Brook's definition.

OrangeMango 7y ago
Of all Git users, only an extremely small percentage use Git as a DVCS (Linux kernel, etc). GitHub is a centralized VCS. In fact, I think you could argue that the emergence of GitHub is a demonstration that DVCS is nearly useless for the vast majority of software development.
- anticodon 7y ago
  I think you don't understand what makes centralized VCS different from distributed. GitHub is just another clone of the repo. For example, I can commit in my Git clone, can create a new branch, merge a branch, push it to the server, all without GitHub server being available. If GitHub would be down or closed tomorrow, this would not significantly affect my work on the repository. This wasn't possible using centralized VCSs.
  - OrangeMango 7y ago
    You can do all of this because Git repos are self-contained complete historical records. You could do this with a traditional VCS as long as you took frequent backups. Git is an improvement in this regard, but not a revolution. Furthermore, you are describing a workflow that is inconsistent from many "industry best practice" recommendations. If GitHub went down, a very large number of Git users would not be able to run tests or deploy their code to production - their CI/CD pipelines don't work without GitHub. Their historical record of issues goes away when GitHub goes down, etc.
    - anticodon 7y ago
      With traditional VCS, I would lose all the history and ability to work (to commit my changes, for example) if server goes down. And I understand that issues and CI/CD will also stop working, but neither of that is part of the VCS itself. I'm not aware of distributed issues (maybe FOSSIL) and CI/CD. Still it doesn't mean that GitHub makes Git centralized.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
DVCS results in an order-of-magnitude improvement? In writing software? I highly doubt it. For that to even be possible, DVCS would have to take on the tasks that take 90% of your time as a programmer. I don't think it can.
- samatman 7y ago
  To quibble, I've long been frustrated that we have no way to distinguish between natural and decimal orders of magnitude. I'm convinced the former is nearly always a more useful measure, but we're sort of stuck with the latter. Even so, no one prior to Git spent 50% of their time wrestling with the VCS, or solving problems caused by a lack of one.

OrangeMango 7y ago

Of all Git users, only an extremely small percentage use Git as a DVCS (Linux kernel, etc). GitHub is a centralized VCS. In fact, I think you could argue that the emergence of GitHub is a demonstration that DVCS is nearly useless for the vast majority of software development.

anticodon 7y ago
I think you don't understand what makes centralized VCS different from distributed. GitHub is just another clone of the repo. For example, I can commit in my Git clone, can create a new branch, merge a branch, push it to the server, all without GitHub server being available. If GitHub would be down or closed tomorrow, this would not significantly affect my work on the repository. This wasn't possible using centralized VCSs.
- OrangeMango 7y ago
  You can do all of this because Git repos are self-contained complete historical records. You could do this with a traditional VCS as long as you took frequent backups. Git is an improvement in this regard, but not a revolution. Furthermore, you are describing a workflow that is inconsistent from many "industry best practice" recommendations. If GitHub went down, a very large number of Git users would not be able to run tests or deploy their code to production - their CI/CD pipelines don't work without GitHub. Their historical record of issues goes away when GitHub goes down, etc.
  - anticodon 7y ago
    With traditional VCS, I would lose all the history and ability to work (to commit my changes, for example) if server goes down. And I understand that issues and CI/CD will also stop working, but neither of that is part of the VCS itself. I'm not aware of distributed issues (maybe FOSSIL) and CI/CD. Still it doesn't mean that GitHub makes Git centralized.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

DVCS results in an order-of-magnitude improvement? In writing software? I highly doubt it. For that to even be possible, DVCS would have to take on the tasks that take 90% of your time as a programmer. I don't think it can.

samatman 7y ago
To quibble, I've long been frustrated that we have no way to distinguish between natural and decimal orders of magnitude. I'm convinced the former is nearly always a more useful measure, but we're sort of stuck with the latter. Even so, no one prior to Git spent 50% of their time wrestling with the VCS, or solving problems caused by a lack of one.