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> I probably could sit down for a couple of days and fully understand how git works This means it isn't hard. If you are capable of understanding algorithms of

> I probably could sit down for a couple of days and fully understand how git works This means it isn't hard. If you are capable of understanding algorithms of any complexity you should be able to learn how to use git (and how much of it) without treading on ground that is dangerous for you to use. All of this "it's too hard" rhetoric is infantilising or coddling people who frankly shouldn't be trusted to code anything of importance anyway. There's no shame in admitting your own limitations, but there is definitely shame in lowering the bar for others so much you are actively harming the industry.

Joeri 6y ago
Everyone starts at the ground floor. What would you tell a beginner who has to figure out 20 different technologies including git to get a basic web project going? Besides, nobody is arguing git needs to be made weaker, just that it would be nice if it had a more gradual learning curve. Easy things easy, hard things possible. If you can’t see how git is hard you’ve forgotten what it is like to be a beginner.
- thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
  >What would you tell a beginner who has to figure out 20 different technologies including git to get a basic web project going? Software development is hard. That's why we have to spend years studying it and earn conspicuously good wages. A basic project doesn't need git anyway.
  - gpderetta 6y ago
    eh, git is perfectly fine even for trivial projects. Agree on the need for education to be a good developer though.
- drran 6y ago
  > What would you tell a beginner who has to figure out 20 different technologies including git to get a basic web project going? We have the whole education system to deal with that. It's the same problem as in mechanics, chemistry, biology, etc.
- krageon 6y ago
  I would tell them they don't need to figure out 20 different technologies. If they think they do, they've missed the point of the "basic" in "basic web project". If the 20 different technologies in your example include such basic things as an IDE and version control (evidently it includes at least the latter), I would tell them to start at the basics and learn the tools before they expect to be able to use them.
skywhopper 6y ago
This is a disgusting, harmful take. You should really step back and rethink your assumptions here. Git is a tool that’s meant to make things easier. It’s complex enough, though, that it’s a stumbling block for a lot of folks for a workflow that really shouldn’t be so complicated. If you intuitively grok how git works, that’s great. I’m going to guess you probably don’t really use it in any challenging or new situations and are just comfortable with your particular workflow. But maybe you do have that mastery level over this one tool in your code management system. But guess what, other folks, true genius folks, either can’t or don’t have the mental bandwidth to learn every nook and cranny of this tool. If you don’t recognize that, you are willfully dismissing a lot of really smart people because their brains don’t work the same way yours does. But when you do that you are weakening yourself and your own capabilities. So step back and re-assess your take here. It’s wrong, and it’s toxic to your own outlook as well as those around you.
- krageon 6y ago
  It's evident that you think requiring basic competence is toxic, but you don't really compel me to feel differently. You have told me what I think is the case is toxic, wrong, disgusting and harmful. I now know you feel strongly about this. I don't hugely feel like seeing things from your point of view because the only thing you've really told me that might change my mind is that you lose people when you require a basic amount of capability. I'm sorry to hear that this grievously wounds you on an emotional level, but I don't see that as a loss.
  - Qwertious 6y ago
    Not the person you're responding to, but I have my own two cents: Saying "basic competence" is horrifically abusing language here. Git is a glorified save/share/undo tool, demanding people spend several days reading the manual is an absolute caricature and yet you're seriously saying that. The reason people are mad at you is that people have lived experience of the interface sucking and failing to do the job an interface does - convey via context what it does and you're basically blaming them for wanting to fix the problem they've experienced instead of sucking it up and Being A Real Man and solving problems they don't have as a workaround for the tool failing to solve problems they do have. And it's not like Git's interface problems are subtle. It's an absolute joke, and you're not even claiming it's an acceptable interface so much as rejecting the entire concept of user interfaces at all. I'm not sure how to explain how utterly infuriating that is. You're saying "you're doing it wrong, so I don't care" while simultaneously complaining that some of the solutions could hurt other peoples' use-cases. What is the correct response here? Reject their own memories and emotions and yield to your blame, or call you a willfully-oblivious fuckhead?
rmtech 6y ago
Yeah this is incorrect. One of the reasons that we able to achieve so much with computers is that there is a separation of concerns between different areas. Requiring everyone to fully understand git is like requiring people who code in high-level languages to understand and apply chip design in their day-to-day work. Imagine if when you tested some Python or Java code you got an error from your CPU and needed to take it out and debug it with an electron microscope. Contemporary git has this disease. Its (command line) user interface is a mess. I could say more about what you would do to make a better version but a comment isn't the place for that. The defence that you are using - that smart people should be able to learn git fully - is like saying that any and every smart programmer should learn IC design and buy their own electron microscope, and that's why it's OK that the chips keep breaking.
- thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
  >I could say more about what you would do to make a better version but a comment isn't the place for that. I'd be very interested because it's rare for me to see anyone attempt and, when I do, they break a basic use case.
  - rmtech 6y ago
    Probably the biggest problem with the git interface is that the interface exposed to the user isn't sufficiently abstracted from the implementation. Insanely complicated commands to undo things are one symptom of this. As a user, you want to "save" some code and you also want to "share" it with others. You also want a historical record of what you did. But obviously you will occasionally save and share things you didn't mean to. Like your Python virtual environment, like a bunch of pictures in their binary format, etc. A sane version control would provide a point-and-click way to make these disappear from history (though with adequate security protections to make sure that only authorized people can do it).
    - thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
      Then you'd need centralised protections to decide who can delete and you instantly lose the distributed features. If I'm a user and I want to save, I do it with my text editor. If I want to share, I can do it with Github, Gerrit, Gitlab, email, pigeon. I never email people things I didn't mean to and, if I did, I wouldn't expect my email software to let me delete it. The centralised services allow it to some degree but even they don't allow information to be un-disseminated. VCS is necessary to deal with changes that overlap and conflict. It's not for backup and it's not a method of communication. If all you need to do is save and share, you don't need VCS.

Joeri 6y ago

Everyone starts at the ground floor. What would you tell a beginner who has to figure out 20 different technologies including git to get a basic web project going? Besides, nobody is arguing git needs to be made weaker, just that it would be nice if it had a more gradual learning curve. Easy things easy, hard things possible. If you can’t see how git is hard you’ve forgotten what it is like to be a beginner.

thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
>What would you tell a beginner who has to figure out 20 different technologies including git to get a basic web project going? Software development is hard. That's why we have to spend years studying it and earn conspicuously good wages. A basic project doesn't need git anyway.
- gpderetta 6y ago
  eh, git is perfectly fine even for trivial projects. Agree on the need for education to be a good developer though.
drran 6y ago
> What would you tell a beginner who has to figure out 20 different technologies including git to get a basic web project going? We have the whole education system to deal with that. It's the same problem as in mechanics, chemistry, biology, etc.
krageon 6y ago
I would tell them they don't need to figure out 20 different technologies. If they think they do, they've missed the point of the "basic" in "basic web project". If the 20 different technologies in your example include such basic things as an IDE and version control (evidently it includes at least the latter), I would tell them to start at the basics and learn the tools before they expect to be able to use them.

skywhopper 6y ago

This is a disgusting, harmful take. You should really step back and rethink your assumptions here. Git is a tool that’s meant to make things easier. It’s complex enough, though, that it’s a stumbling block for a lot of folks for a workflow that really shouldn’t be so complicated. If you intuitively grok how git works, that’s great. I’m going to guess you probably don’t really use it in any challenging or new situations and are just comfortable with your particular workflow. But maybe you do have that mastery level over this one tool in your code management system. But guess what, other folks, true genius folks, either can’t or don’t have the mental bandwidth to learn every nook and cranny of this tool. If you don’t recognize that, you are willfully dismissing a lot of really smart people because their brains don’t work the same way yours does. But when you do that you are weakening yourself and your own capabilities. So step back and re-assess your take here. It’s wrong, and it’s toxic to your own outlook as well as those around you.

krageon 6y ago
It's evident that you think requiring basic competence is toxic, but you don't really compel me to feel differently. You have told me what I think is the case is toxic, wrong, disgusting and harmful. I now know you feel strongly about this. I don't hugely feel like seeing things from your point of view because the only thing you've really told me that might change my mind is that you lose people when you require a basic amount of capability. I'm sorry to hear that this grievously wounds you on an emotional level, but I don't see that as a loss.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  Not the person you're responding to, but I have my own two cents: Saying "basic competence" is horrifically abusing language here. Git is a glorified save/share/undo tool, demanding people spend several days reading the manual is an absolute caricature and yet you're seriously saying that. The reason people are mad at you is that people have lived experience of the interface sucking and failing to do the job an interface does - convey via context what it does and you're basically blaming them for wanting to fix the problem they've experienced instead of sucking it up and Being A Real Man and solving problems they don't have as a workaround for the tool failing to solve problems they do have. And it's not like Git's interface problems are subtle. It's an absolute joke, and you're not even claiming it's an acceptable interface so much as rejecting the entire concept of user interfaces at all. I'm not sure how to explain how utterly infuriating that is. You're saying "you're doing it wrong, so I don't care" while simultaneously complaining that some of the solutions could hurt other peoples' use-cases. What is the correct response here? Reject their own memories and emotions and yield to your blame, or call you a willfully-oblivious fuckhead?

rmtech 6y ago

Yeah this is incorrect. One of the reasons that we able to achieve so much with computers is that there is a separation of concerns between different areas. Requiring everyone to fully understand git is like requiring people who code in high-level languages to understand and apply chip design in their day-to-day work. Imagine if when you tested some Python or Java code you got an error from your CPU and needed to take it out and debug it with an electron microscope. Contemporary git has this disease. Its (command line) user interface is a mess. I could say more about what you would do to make a better version but a comment isn't the place for that. The defence that you are using - that smart people should be able to learn git fully - is like saying that any and every smart programmer should learn IC design and buy their own electron microscope, and that's why it's OK that the chips keep breaking.

thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
>I could say more about what you would do to make a better version but a comment isn't the place for that. I'd be very interested because it's rare for me to see anyone attempt and, when I do, they break a basic use case.
- rmtech 6y ago
  Probably the biggest problem with the git interface is that the interface exposed to the user isn't sufficiently abstracted from the implementation. Insanely complicated commands to undo things are one symptom of this. As a user, you want to "save" some code and you also want to "share" it with others. You also want a historical record of what you did. But obviously you will occasionally save and share things you didn't mean to. Like your Python virtual environment, like a bunch of pictures in their binary format, etc. A sane version control would provide a point-and-click way to make these disappear from history (though with adequate security protections to make sure that only authorized people can do it).
  - thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
    Then you'd need centralised protections to decide who can delete and you instantly lose the distributed features. If I'm a user and I want to save, I do it with my text editor. If I want to share, I can do it with Github, Gerrit, Gitlab, email, pigeon. I never email people things I didn't mean to and, if I did, I wouldn't expect my email software to let me delete it. The centralised services allow it to some degree but even they don't allow information to be un-disseminated. VCS is necessary to deal with changes that overlap and conflict. It's not for backup and it's not a method of communication. If all you need to do is save and share, you don't need VCS.