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Git is not a success story? I wonder if the author of this tweet is aware that Git has almost entirely conquered the development world these past few years. Th

Git is not a success story? I wonder if the author of this tweet is aware that Git has almost entirely conquered the development world these past few years. That doesn't happen as a result of having a bad user experience. Git is a powerful tool that does an excellent job of versioning and collaboration, and I can't imagine wanting it to be any more user friendly than what it currently is.

bsder 6y ago
I disagree. Git didn't win--GitHub won. Git was the parasite carried along by the GitHub host.
- dwheeler 6y ago
  No, git essentially won. GitHub is the single most common site for OSS projects, but there are many others, and they generally use git as well. GitLab obviously supports git. SourceForge supports git. Savannah supports git. Bitbucket supports git. Microsoft internally uses git, and that happened before they bought GitHub: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/24/microsoft-now-uses-git-and-gvfs-to-develop-windows/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/24/microsoft-now-uses-git-and... There are other version control systems, but git is by far and away the majority player.
  - bsder 6y ago
    Methinks you need a history lesson. Bitbucket was originally Mercurial-only. Savannah was SVN-only forever. SourceForge (geez--people still mention them after they turned into a dumpster fire of malware?) was CVS then SVN and only much later Git (long after SourceForge was relevant anymore). I presume GitLab was Git from the start. > Microsoft internally uses git Long after there was any relevance to the choice.
    - dwheeler 6y ago
      Methinks not. I was around for all that history, and that is exactly my point. Savannah, bitbucket, and SourceForge all added support for git later because they had to. They added support for git because git won, not because it failed. Also, please look at the article I cited about Microsoft. That was not just a simple swap. Microsoft could not use git as-is because of the way they use Version Control in general. Instead of sticking to their existing system, they implemented additional functionality for git so that git would work in their environment. That is a vote of confidence for git, because they believed it was better to add functionality to git.
- aaron695 6y ago
  Yep. I think that's mostly it. Linux backed, followed by GitHub sold the deal. The incumbents were possibly better but were too forked to individually beat that team. It became a standard like English as someone else pointed out.
  - dwheeler 6y ago
    There's more to it than that. I think mercurial's user interface has its advantages, but when they were facing off each other, git was far faster and quickly added more advanced capabilities. Power users preferred the speed, and they were the ones generally deciding which version control systems to use. But that does not mean that git's user interface is perfect. I think there are many things that could be done to make it much easier to understand and use by non power users.
    - aaron695 6y ago
      I agree Git won the power users. I think perhaps all that's needed is a GUI front end that ignores the structure of Git and just gives non-power users what they want. Like one button. Backup, delete repo, re-pull and re-add my changes. No explanation of what's doing under the hood. Simplify branches for simple repos. Power users can do their thing seperate. And improve GitHub. A WYSIWYG to edit .md files for instance. I think it's not impossible to get Git and GitHub good.
Barrin92 6y ago
>conquered the development world these past few years. That doesn't happen as a result of having a bad user experience might does not make right. I can think of a few technologies that are overwhelmingly popular but are, objectively speaking, at best mediocre or in some cases downright awful. Now I think overall git is a positive and it's a hard problem, but some aspects of it, like its user interface are pretty bad.
nobodyandproud 6y ago
It doesn’t hurt that Git is free. The problem I have with Git conquering the dev world is that it was built with large, over-the-internet projects in mind. That same design hampers other projects, but who really wants to learn multiple VCS?
- loopz 6y ago
  No need. git init, and you've just made a new repo in local directory. You can't make it simpler and as powerful.
  - nobodyandproud 6y ago
    I wasn’t talking about private projects. Git doesn’t do well with blobs and binaries (it’s convenient to have in VCS). Git also isn’t so great with classic software structures either, where different teams work on different modules to build up into a whole. There are third party tools to paper over this difference, but the right tool for the right project applies.

bsder 6y ago

I disagree. Git didn't win--GitHub won. Git was the parasite carried along by the GitHub host.

dwheeler 6y ago
No, git essentially won. GitHub is the single most common site for OSS projects, but there are many others, and they generally use git as well. GitLab obviously supports git. SourceForge supports git. Savannah supports git. Bitbucket supports git. Microsoft internally uses git, and that happened before they bought GitHub: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/24/microsoft-now-uses-git-and-gvfs-to-develop-windows/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/24/microsoft-now-uses-git-and... There are other version control systems, but git is by far and away the majority player.
- bsder 6y ago
  Methinks you need a history lesson. Bitbucket was originally Mercurial-only. Savannah was SVN-only forever. SourceForge (geez--people still mention them after they turned into a dumpster fire of malware?) was CVS then SVN and only much later Git (long after SourceForge was relevant anymore). I presume GitLab was Git from the start. > Microsoft internally uses git Long after there was any relevance to the choice.
  - dwheeler 6y ago
    Methinks not. I was around for all that history, and that is exactly my point. Savannah, bitbucket, and SourceForge all added support for git later because they had to. They added support for git because git won, not because it failed. Also, please look at the article I cited about Microsoft. That was not just a simple swap. Microsoft could not use git as-is because of the way they use Version Control in general. Instead of sticking to their existing system, they implemented additional functionality for git so that git would work in their environment. That is a vote of confidence for git, because they believed it was better to add functionality to git.
aaron695 6y ago
Yep. I think that's mostly it. Linux backed, followed by GitHub sold the deal. The incumbents were possibly better but were too forked to individually beat that team. It became a standard like English as someone else pointed out.
- dwheeler 6y ago
  There's more to it than that. I think mercurial's user interface has its advantages, but when they were facing off each other, git was far faster and quickly added more advanced capabilities. Power users preferred the speed, and they were the ones generally deciding which version control systems to use. But that does not mean that git's user interface is perfect. I think there are many things that could be done to make it much easier to understand and use by non power users.
  - aaron695 6y ago
    I agree Git won the power users. I think perhaps all that's needed is a GUI front end that ignores the structure of Git and just gives non-power users what they want. Like one button. Backup, delete repo, re-pull and re-add my changes. No explanation of what's doing under the hood. Simplify branches for simple repos. Power users can do their thing seperate. And improve GitHub. A WYSIWYG to edit .md files for instance. I think it's not impossible to get Git and GitHub good.

Barrin92 6y ago

>conquered the development world these past few years. That doesn't happen as a result of having a bad user experience might does not make right. I can think of a few technologies that are overwhelmingly popular but are, objectively speaking, at best mediocre or in some cases downright awful. Now I think overall git is a positive and it's a hard problem, but some aspects of it, like its user interface are pretty bad.

nobodyandproud 6y ago

It doesn’t hurt that Git is free. The problem I have with Git conquering the dev world is that it was built with large, over-the-internet projects in mind. That same design hampers other projects, but who really wants to learn multiple VCS?

loopz 6y ago
No need. git init, and you've just made a new repo in local directory. You can't make it simpler and as powerful.
- nobodyandproud 6y ago
  I wasn’t talking about private projects. Git doesn’t do well with blobs and binaries (it’s convenient to have in VCS). Git also isn’t so great with classic software structures either, where different teams work on different modules to build up into a whole. There are third party tools to paper over this difference, but the right tool for the right project applies.