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I wouldn't say I'm an expert but I've got about 10 years experience using git via CLI and whenever a noob does something weird and he's using an IDE I'm like...

I wouldn't say I'm an expert but I've got about 10 years experience using git via CLI and whenever a noob does something weird and he's using an IDE I'm like... Sorry I have zero idea what this is trying to do and cannot help you

FunnyLookinHat 5y ago
I've had similar experiences with git or other tools - not being able to help a junior dev because the GUI they're using is obfuscating whatever it is the underlying tool is trying to do. I think the irony is that we've got this insanely complex version control system that actually could have several valid use cases for what is likely a common path for users in a GUI. I'm also not sure referring to people as "noobs" is going to help you empathize with their difficulty. ;)
- gavinray 5y ago
  Eh, that term seems to have fallen out of favor compared to when I was a growing up but I don't think it necessarily has a negative connotation. I remember being in programming and software related IRCs at 10-11 years old having no earthly clue what in the fuck I was doing, asking adults questions and getting called a "noob". Well, yeah, it was true. (I also made damn sure they had no idea I was a child.) They could have said "inexperienced person" but that's not got quite the same ring and people are lazy, aye? Haha
  - ketzu 5y ago
    My personal experience around noob is covered by the ones I found on ~~most~~ edit: the most high search-ranked online explanations: Mostly negatively conotated, deregatory version of newbie. Often associated with people not sufficiently able to learn or at least not learning on their own. Examples: * https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noob https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noob * https://www.etymonline.com/word/noob https://www.etymonline.com/word/noob Examples not containing the negative connotation: * https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noob https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noob * https://neologisms.rice.edu/index.php?a=term&d=1&t=2471 https://neologisms.rice.edu/index.php?a=term&d=1&t=2471 It might be something used quite differently by two similar groups, so it is good to be aware that other people may use it the other way.
    - b3morales 5y ago
      I often see people self-describe as noobs when asking technical questions, for example in programming Reddits. I couldn't say that I understand the reason for it, though.
      - edoceo 5y ago
        Noob is the first step to being a master. So, those "noob"s are indicating they're early in the process.
      - derac 5y ago
        Saying you're a novice when asking for help can be useful. People will use less jargon and point to more accessible resources, etc.
    - cratermoon 5y ago
      I've been around long enough and in enough circles that I have seen 'noob' go from mildly chiding to full-on insult. It used to be that in some communities, being referred to as a noob was a sort of "hey check out the new guy" ribbing. A noob was just someone starting out, a neophyte. It was the impatient and rude who later decided that being a noob was a bad thing.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  “Hey can you help me? I stood up a kratr pod and it’s lined to fundle but for some reason when I try to press the bin tree to the overlay layer the reznik instance on my laptop says ‘out of tokens’. Have you ever encountered this?” No, no I have not.
  - dagw 5y ago
    Having been troubleshooting computers since I was literally 8 years old (like I'm sure many of us here have) I feel reasonably comfortable I could at least be helpful solving this problem as well. Every problem I have to troubleshoot is almost by definition one I've never encountered before.
    - nuclearnice1 5y ago
      100% Great attitude. I’ll meet you where you are and help out.
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      I can help. It doesn’t mean I’ve encountered it before.
  - CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
    Yup - Every darn time. Reminds me of "How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12628921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12628921
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      Nothing has changed in 5 years, has it?
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        Let's hope not, then I can use it as a template.
      - 5y ago
zwischenzug 5y ago
This is exactly what motivated me to write Learn Git The Hard Way - I was surrounded by people who depended utterly on IDEs and got themselves into terrible states that based on models that were refractions of what the the (universally available) CLI gives you. The best example of this was when I worked with a project with 12 dev teams that didn't rebase. They asked me where a commit came from, and when I ran 'git log --oneline --graph' the output was all pipes across my (maximized) terminal. I've never seriously gotten into the 'plumbing' of git, so can't claim to have a 'true' vision of git via the CLI, but I've never yet been in a situation where it's been required.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  Any developer demonstrating that level of daily incompetence with their basic tools of the trade should never be allowed to write code. The fact that this level of incompetence seems the rule rather than the exception speaks to the rather terrifyingly pathetic state of software, where badly engineered systems end up killing people. Source: firmware engineering consultant that cleans up messes like these for some of the biggest corporations in the world, who build things that will kill people when they fail. I would love to blow the whistle, if I thought that would have any positive outcome whatsoever.
  - galangalalgol 5y ago
    I'll admit as a 20yr c++ developer, I don't know what rebase is or when to use it. I've only been using git for a few years, cvs before that. I commit and push often, then do a merge request via a web portal gui(bitbucket or gitlab), then merge it squashing commits again using the gui.
    - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
      I prefer merge/fast forward because I want all history preserved. People can rebase their changes in their branch, but rebasing is never done on the main or development branches. Most of the worst merge conflict I’ve had to deal with were caused by someone rebasing changes they didn’t make. I reject all pull requests that change history.
agilob 5y ago
I feel you. I was recently hired to help with svn to git migration and Java upgrades from 5-7 to 8 (due to my previous experience with such migrations). When I joined they already had a plan. They told me no one will be using command line. They are currently discussing which GUI to use and everyone will have this GUI installed by default, git command will be discouraged as non-standard approach, windows users will not have git-bash installed. I was asked for recommendation of GUI tooling for git and I had absolutely nothing to say, the only I ever used was Kraken and that was in 2014?. When I offered to train and assist everyone with git command training to make everyone more efficient in industry standardised tooling, they told me that's not in the plan. My job was done there without me having to do doing anything, I was free to leave that job!
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Sublime merge would have been a good suggestion in this scenario. It's UI uses standard git terminology and concepts, so you'd have been sneakily trainig them in the command line whilst they used the UI!
  - agilob 5y ago
    It was in a very old fashion and regulated working environment where developers and testers aren't allowed to install whatever they want. Software installers can be whitelisted after a review is done. It included things like: licence OSS vs enterprise, support, community, or even more banal things like stars on github. Adding new software to a list could take literally months - like in case of git GUI client. Sublime was frequently requested but managers were responding "you already can install Eclipse and Intellij, you also have Notepad++, you don't need more editors. More editors installed is a security risk to this company!" (some hackers found a way to run VSCode portable edition which didn't offer updates ;)) This was end of discussion. This is also why there was so so much fuss about git GUI client, there were looking for a golden hammer, a GUI that would do everything and anything.
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      The git GUI in Intellij and related products is really quite good. The diff view that shows three adjacent panes for conflict resolution (|theirs ->|merge|<-yours|) is so much better than the normal conflict resolution flow (not least because you still get the normal code highlighting in it), and separate checkboxes for each changed section of the diff makes it so easy to chunk large changes into logical commits. I wish they offered it as a standalone product.
oli-g 5y ago
I understand that some GUIs sort of become "black boxes" while trying to abstract away the complexity, but I know at least one (Sublime Merge) that always shows you the low-level commands it's trying to run.
larusso 5y ago
Same for me. I switched from SVN to git professionally in 2013 and used git via Sourcetree on personal smaller projects. I had to switch to the CLI git because so used SVN also on CLI only and could not transfer the documentation to the buttons of Sourcetree. Whenever I help out other coworkers with git do it via commandline. Doesn‘t matter if windows or Unix. What drives me nuts with programs like Sourcetree is the fact that they apply their own default behaviors to make it „easier“ to use git. Like initializing submodules by default. I had a project with a sparse checkout scheme that could not be cloned via Sourcetree because of this. Our submodules where an optional compiler for a 3rd party platform.
smt88 5y ago
Good git GUIs (I use SmartGit and love it) do the following: - use the same terminology as git - show a log of every command - default to sane behavior - ask preferences instead of assuming (ex: rebase or merge?) - show warnings when doing something destructive or unusual I've found that I now spend zero time learning and thinking about git anymore, and it also protects our repos from git noobs at the same time.
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  Another SmartGit fan here. Adding to your list: - Want a diff between two commits from two different branches? Click one commit and Ctrl+click the other. All the diffs show up immediately. - Messed something up badly and you need to see the reflog? Click the Recyclable Commits checkbox, and everything in the reflog shows up just like any normal commit. And you can use the diff trick above on them. - Wonder what's in your stashes that you forgot about? Click the Stashes checkbox and they all show up as normal commits. Because that's what a stash really is. - Committed something to the wrong branch? Drag the branch markers to where you want them.
jbluepolarbear 5y ago
I have 10 years of git cli and I use GitHub desktop or Sourcetree most of the time. I started using using a git IDE to help support the team members that weren’t experienced in git that chose to use one. I work in games and a lot of game developers mostly know Perforce. I would never brush off a team member with “cannot help you”. I’m a git expert and I will figure out what’s wrong and fix it.
- thwarted 5y ago
  But are you an expert in the IDE? Are they having a problem with git or are they having a problem with the IDE?
  - Dayshine 5y ago
    Every IDE I know shows you a log of the raw commands its running. I use the IDE first, then if something goes wrong (which very very rarely happens, git isn't exactly complicated) I check the log and see what it's trying to do.
    - Salgat 5y ago
      On top of that, the IDE will let you run git directly in an authenticated session if you really desire. If a simple/dumb GUI wrapper around git is enough to scare off an experienced developer, then I have my doubts about their competence.
  - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
    It’s usually a mix of both ide and git issues. And yes I’ve become an expert in using Sourcetree and GitHub desktop. I actually like GitHub Desktop a lot and use it for most dev now.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Oh, I’ll figure out the problem alright. One git status on the command line aught to tell me what it is.
crazygringo 5y ago
First of all, using "noob" like that is offensive. Everyone's a "noob" at some point. And if that's how you talk and treat people, I probably wouldn't want your help. And second, what exactly mystifies you about what e.g. SourceTree menu commands do? They map clearly and intuitively to CLI commands. If you have "no idea" what it's trying to do then you're not even trying to be helpful. You're just being condescending.
- laumars 5y ago
  I get you disagree with the GPs post but “noob” isn’t offensive. What’s offensive is their lack of support for colleagues (which reads like a potential issue with their own ego: where they didnt want to be shown up in an unfamiliar UI). But their post reads exactly the same if you substituted “noob” for “newbie”, “junior”, “inexperience” etc. What we need to do is get passed this ridiculous mindset some have that not knowing something is a bad thing. We all have to start off somewhere and “noob” is just a common term for describing that. Case in point: I’ll readily post “noob question guys, how do I…?” on Slack to give context that I’m asking a potentially basic question and basically don’t really know what I’m doing. For reference, I am the most senior on my team and yet I have zero issue highlighting stuff I don’t know when asking for help. And that’s exactly the way it should be. There’s no shame in being new at something. What there should be is shame in wanting to mock newbies and shaming and those who don’t offer up their help to others. Being a noob should be celebrated as someone new joining the team rather than added to our dictionary of inappropriate terms.
  - hedora 5y ago
    I don’t think they meant noob as a pejorative. Anyway, I’ve been the “resident git expert” before, and even just supporting competent CLI users is miserable once the team grows beyond 30 or so people. I can’t imagine trying to then reverse engineer and debug a half dozen crappy GUIs. Optimizing everything around developers that can’t figure out the CLI sounds like a great way to attract bozos (both by admitting bozos and by chasing non-bozos out).
    - 5y ago
dagw 5y ago
Isn't that just being incredibly lazy. Surely a reasonably experience person like yourself should be able to read the error message and at least get a rough idea about what the problem is. Then from there explain how you would fix it on the CLI and try to map that onto the GUI. Most Git GUIs map fairly closely to the underlying git model. Why not just say the truth "I could help you, but it's not my job, so I'm not going to"
- Shywim 5y ago
  > Most Git GUIs map fairly closely to the underlying git model. Maybe, but most Git GUIs don't provide clear error messages. This is the case of VSCode, which my teamates keep using. When you use Git CLI you can just have the original error message and know what's wrong. I was also burned by sourcetree some years ago where it lost part of my code while doing a merge I didn't even understand. I am not a Git expert. But I can remember the 5 commands needed to do my job every day: `commit`, `push`, `pull`, `rebase`, `checkout`. (you can also add `add` and `status` to the list if you want) They're straighforward, except for `checkout` which is adressed by `switch` for the main usage. If you use it wrong, Git CLI will tell you in most of the cases, and even tell you how to do what you intented to do. Git GUIs will probably tell you something wrong happened and left you at that or try to be more intelligent than you are and do something wrong. > Isn't that just being incredibly lazy. -> this is what I'd answer to do those Git GUIs. > Isn't that just being incredibly lazy. -> this is what I'd say to people who won't write these 5 commands on a sticky note or something and keep it for a month before realizing it wasn't hard to remember once you _commit_ to it and that Git is not hard, minus exceptional problems but Git GUIs absolutely won't help you with these exceptional problems.
  - zkldi 5y ago
    You can see the original error message in vscode by clicking "output" and navigating to Git in the dropdown.
cannabis_sam 5y ago
This is my main gripe about git, it’s literally a tool created to suit the guy managing the linux kernel development via mailing lists… What proportion of junior developers are even tangentially working on anything resembling that? Even if it’s exceptionally wonky, I have absolutely no problem introducing git to new devs, as long as it’s alongside a graphical representation (sourcetree or some ide-extension), and as long as I am able to enforce limitations on what commands can be run on the git CLI (or more realistically, disallow push to master, and force every merge/rebase through a review) I’ve personally found that it’s trivial to understand how IDEs integrate git and then adapt the workflow around that, but it’s a complete clusterfuck to let self-proclaimed git wizards loose on a repo without any structure..
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Yeah, hence see the criticisms of git from completely different sides from fossil devs on one hand and pijul dev(s?) on the other. Git probably has its place, but only on very specific, large scale projects, with a crack core team and hundreds of drive-by contributors ?
  - tehbeard 5y ago
    > Git probably has its place, but only on very specific, large scale projects, with a crack core team and hundreds of drive-by contributors ? So, hypothetically, if that were the case, what is the recommendation for Small/Medium web agencies?
    - Dudeman112 5y ago
      No versioning at all, of course. On a more serious note, I wonder if GP ever worked on projects outside of large enterprises and is just gatekeeping it. Git is useful on solo projects, for God's sake.
      - mikro2nd 5y ago
        Useful? Yes. Way overkill? Also yes (imho). HG is simpler to understand, has a more consistent CLI, and way better error messaging. Just a pity that it's been so sorely overshadowed by the Swiss Army Chainsaw of VCS. Git can certainly do almost anything/everything anybody might want from a VCS, but, just like a chainsaw, it'll cut your leg off just as soon as it'll cut off the branch you're pruning if you're not fully expert in using it.
z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
So what you're saying is that you're 10 years of experience were you solely to over specialize in a single application utility which ultimately adds up to an absolutely giant pile of inflexibility and incompetence?
detinho 5y ago
Specially when the ide doesn't use standard names and/or introduces new terms. Visual/ide tools to use git are welcome and I use them occasionally. But the cli should be the common denominator.
MarkSweep 5y ago
What about staging lines to the index? I tried ‘git add -i’, but it feels pretty clunky compared to selecting some lines with a mouse in git-gui.
- einherjae 5y ago
  git add -p
  - MarkSweep 5y ago
    Oh thanks, that works fairly well. I still prefer git-gui for this, but this will work nicely when I'm ssh-ed into a machine with no GUI.
    - useragent86 5y ago
      Magit is the king of staging and unstaging. You can even use it on remote systems via TRAMP.
spkm 5y ago
I completely agree. At work we still use SVN, so I'm used to TortoiseSVN which is OK imo. Now for GIT there's TortoiseGIT, but it was such a bad experience. The TortoiseSVN background made it even worse, because things seemed similar, but did totally different things. So weirdly, for SVN I still use Tortoise, but for GIT, I prefer the CLI client.
dmz73 5y ago
If you are using a command line tool for 10 years and don't consider yourself an expert then either you are not using the tool very often or the tool is not well designed. In case of git I would say it is the latter. I mostly use git via tortoise interface and that works well 95% of the time. Other 5% is split between git mv, git branch -D, and trying various commands in order to make git do something simple that can't be done and then giving up. At this stage I see git as necessary evil rather than something that helps me with source version control.
ReFruity 5y ago
That is true, but I think IntelliJ provides you with the list of commands it executed to get there.

FunnyLookinHat 5y ago

I've had similar experiences with git or other tools - not being able to help a junior dev because the GUI they're using is obfuscating whatever it is the underlying tool is trying to do. I think the irony is that we've got this insanely complex version control system that actually could have several valid use cases for what is likely a common path for users in a GUI. I'm also not sure referring to people as "noobs" is going to help you empathize with their difficulty. ;)

gavinray 5y ago
Eh, that term seems to have fallen out of favor compared to when I was a growing up but I don't think it necessarily has a negative connotation. I remember being in programming and software related IRCs at 10-11 years old having no earthly clue what in the fuck I was doing, asking adults questions and getting called a "noob". Well, yeah, it was true. (I also made damn sure they had no idea I was a child.) They could have said "inexperienced person" but that's not got quite the same ring and people are lazy, aye? Haha
- ketzu 5y ago
  My personal experience around noob is covered by the ones I found on ~~most~~ edit: the most high search-ranked online explanations: Mostly negatively conotated, deregatory version of newbie. Often associated with people not sufficiently able to learn or at least not learning on their own. Examples: * https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noob https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noob * https://www.etymonline.com/word/noob https://www.etymonline.com/word/noob Examples not containing the negative connotation: * https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noob https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noob * https://neologisms.rice.edu/index.php?a=term&d=1&t=2471 https://neologisms.rice.edu/index.php?a=term&d=1&t=2471 It might be something used quite differently by two similar groups, so it is good to be aware that other people may use it the other way.
  - b3morales 5y ago
    I often see people self-describe as noobs when asking technical questions, for example in programming Reddits. I couldn't say that I understand the reason for it, though.
    - edoceo 5y ago
      Noob is the first step to being a master. So, those "noob"s are indicating they're early in the process.
    - derac 5y ago
      Saying you're a novice when asking for help can be useful. People will use less jargon and point to more accessible resources, etc.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    I've been around long enough and in enough circles that I have seen 'noob' go from mildly chiding to full-on insult. It used to be that in some communities, being referred to as a noob was a sort of "hey check out the new guy" ribbing. A noob was just someone starting out, a neophyte. It was the impatient and rude who later decided that being a noob was a bad thing.
IgorPartola 5y ago
“Hey can you help me? I stood up a kratr pod and it’s lined to fundle but for some reason when I try to press the bin tree to the overlay layer the reznik instance on my laptop says ‘out of tokens’. Have you ever encountered this?” No, no I have not.
- dagw 5y ago
  Having been troubleshooting computers since I was literally 8 years old (like I'm sure many of us here have) I feel reasonably comfortable I could at least be helpful solving this problem as well. Every problem I have to troubleshoot is almost by definition one I've never encountered before.
  - nuclearnice1 5y ago
    100% Great attitude. I’ll meet you where you are and help out.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    I can help. It doesn’t mean I’ve encountered it before.
- CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
  Yup - Every darn time. Reminds me of "How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12628921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12628921
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    Nothing has changed in 5 years, has it?
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      Let's hope not, then I can use it as a template.
    - 5y ago

zwischenzug 5y ago

This is exactly what motivated me to write Learn Git The Hard Way - I was surrounded by people who depended utterly on IDEs and got themselves into terrible states that based on models that were refractions of what the the (universally available) CLI gives you. The best example of this was when I worked with a project with 12 dev teams that didn't rebase. They asked me where a commit came from, and when I ran 'git log --oneline --graph' the output was all pipes across my (maximized) terminal. I've never seriously gotten into the 'plumbing' of git, so can't claim to have a 'true' vision of git via the CLI, but I've never yet been in a situation where it's been required.

voakbasda 5y ago
Any developer demonstrating that level of daily incompetence with their basic tools of the trade should never be allowed to write code. The fact that this level of incompetence seems the rule rather than the exception speaks to the rather terrifyingly pathetic state of software, where badly engineered systems end up killing people. Source: firmware engineering consultant that cleans up messes like these for some of the biggest corporations in the world, who build things that will kill people when they fail. I would love to blow the whistle, if I thought that would have any positive outcome whatsoever.
- galangalalgol 5y ago
  I'll admit as a 20yr c++ developer, I don't know what rebase is or when to use it. I've only been using git for a few years, cvs before that. I commit and push often, then do a merge request via a web portal gui(bitbucket or gitlab), then merge it squashing commits again using the gui.
  - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
    I prefer merge/fast forward because I want all history preserved. People can rebase their changes in their branch, but rebasing is never done on the main or development branches. Most of the worst merge conflict I’ve had to deal with were caused by someone rebasing changes they didn’t make. I reject all pull requests that change history.

agilob 5y ago

I feel you. I was recently hired to help with svn to git migration and Java upgrades from 5-7 to 8 (due to my previous experience with such migrations). When I joined they already had a plan. They told me no one will be using command line. They are currently discussing which GUI to use and everyone will have this GUI installed by default, git command will be discouraged as non-standard approach, windows users will not have git-bash installed. I was asked for recommendation of GUI tooling for git and I had absolutely nothing to say, the only I ever used was Kraken and that was in 2014?. When I offered to train and assist everyone with git command training to make everyone more efficient in industry standardised tooling, they told me that's not in the plan. My job was done there without me having to do doing anything, I was free to leave that job!

nicoburns 5y ago
Sublime merge would have been a good suggestion in this scenario. It's UI uses standard git terminology and concepts, so you'd have been sneakily trainig them in the command line whilst they used the UI!
- agilob 5y ago
  It was in a very old fashion and regulated working environment where developers and testers aren't allowed to install whatever they want. Software installers can be whitelisted after a review is done. It included things like: licence OSS vs enterprise, support, community, or even more banal things like stars on github. Adding new software to a list could take literally months - like in case of git GUI client. Sublime was frequently requested but managers were responding "you already can install Eclipse and Intellij, you also have Notepad++, you don't need more editors. More editors installed is a security risk to this company!" (some hackers found a way to run VSCode portable edition which didn't offer updates ;)) This was end of discussion. This is also why there was so so much fuss about git GUI client, there were looking for a golden hammer, a GUI that would do everything and anything.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    The git GUI in Intellij and related products is really quite good. The diff view that shows three adjacent panes for conflict resolution (|theirs ->|merge|<-yours|) is so much better than the normal conflict resolution flow (not least because you still get the normal code highlighting in it), and separate checkboxes for each changed section of the diff makes it so easy to chunk large changes into logical commits. I wish they offered it as a standalone product.

oli-g 5y ago

I understand that some GUIs sort of become "black boxes" while trying to abstract away the complexity, but I know at least one (Sublime Merge) that always shows you the low-level commands it's trying to run.

larusso 5y ago

Same for me. I switched from SVN to git professionally in 2013 and used git via Sourcetree on personal smaller projects. I had to switch to the CLI git because so used SVN also on CLI only and could not transfer the documentation to the buttons of Sourcetree. Whenever I help out other coworkers with git do it via commandline. Doesn‘t matter if windows or Unix. What drives me nuts with programs like Sourcetree is the fact that they apply their own default behaviors to make it „easier“ to use git. Like initializing submodules by default. I had a project with a sparse checkout scheme that could not be cloned via Sourcetree because of this. Our submodules where an optional compiler for a 3rd party platform.

smt88 5y ago

Good git GUIs (I use SmartGit and love it) do the following: - use the same terminology as git - show a log of every command - default to sane behavior - ask preferences instead of assuming (ex: rebase or merge?) - show warnings when doing something destructive or unusual I've found that I now spend zero time learning and thinking about git anymore, and it also protects our repos from git noobs at the same time.

Stratoscope 5y ago
Another SmartGit fan here. Adding to your list: - Want a diff between two commits from two different branches? Click one commit and Ctrl+click the other. All the diffs show up immediately. - Messed something up badly and you need to see the reflog? Click the Recyclable Commits checkbox, and everything in the reflog shows up just like any normal commit. And you can use the diff trick above on them. - Wonder what's in your stashes that you forgot about? Click the Stashes checkbox and they all show up as normal commits. Because that's what a stash really is. - Committed something to the wrong branch? Drag the branch markers to where you want them.

jbluepolarbear 5y ago

I have 10 years of git cli and I use GitHub desktop or Sourcetree most of the time. I started using using a git IDE to help support the team members that weren’t experienced in git that chose to use one. I work in games and a lot of game developers mostly know Perforce. I would never brush off a team member with “cannot help you”. I’m a git expert and I will figure out what’s wrong and fix it.

thwarted 5y ago
But are you an expert in the IDE? Are they having a problem with git or are they having a problem with the IDE?
- Dayshine 5y ago
  Every IDE I know shows you a log of the raw commands its running. I use the IDE first, then if something goes wrong (which very very rarely happens, git isn't exactly complicated) I check the log and see what it's trying to do.
  - Salgat 5y ago
    On top of that, the IDE will let you run git directly in an authenticated session if you really desire. If a simple/dumb GUI wrapper around git is enough to scare off an experienced developer, then I have my doubts about their competence.
- jbluepolarbear 5y ago
  It’s usually a mix of both ide and git issues. And yes I’ve become an expert in using Sourcetree and GitHub desktop. I actually like GitHub Desktop a lot and use it for most dev now.
Aeolun 5y ago
Oh, I’ll figure out the problem alright. One git status on the command line aught to tell me what it is.

crazygringo 5y ago

First of all, using "noob" like that is offensive. Everyone's a "noob" at some point. And if that's how you talk and treat people, I probably wouldn't want your help. And second, what exactly mystifies you about what e.g. SourceTree menu commands do? They map clearly and intuitively to CLI commands. If you have "no idea" what it's trying to do then you're not even trying to be helpful. You're just being condescending.

laumars 5y ago
I get you disagree with the GPs post but “noob” isn’t offensive. What’s offensive is their lack of support for colleagues (which reads like a potential issue with their own ego: where they didnt want to be shown up in an unfamiliar UI). But their post reads exactly the same if you substituted “noob” for “newbie”, “junior”, “inexperience” etc. What we need to do is get passed this ridiculous mindset some have that not knowing something is a bad thing. We all have to start off somewhere and “noob” is just a common term for describing that. Case in point: I’ll readily post “noob question guys, how do I…?” on Slack to give context that I’m asking a potentially basic question and basically don’t really know what I’m doing. For reference, I am the most senior on my team and yet I have zero issue highlighting stuff I don’t know when asking for help. And that’s exactly the way it should be. There’s no shame in being new at something. What there should be is shame in wanting to mock newbies and shaming and those who don’t offer up their help to others. Being a noob should be celebrated as someone new joining the team rather than added to our dictionary of inappropriate terms.
- hedora 5y ago
  I don’t think they meant noob as a pejorative. Anyway, I’ve been the “resident git expert” before, and even just supporting competent CLI users is miserable once the team grows beyond 30 or so people. I can’t imagine trying to then reverse engineer and debug a half dozen crappy GUIs. Optimizing everything around developers that can’t figure out the CLI sounds like a great way to attract bozos (both by admitting bozos and by chasing non-bozos out).
  - 5y ago

dagw 5y ago

Isn't that just being incredibly lazy. Surely a reasonably experience person like yourself should be able to read the error message and at least get a rough idea about what the problem is. Then from there explain how you would fix it on the CLI and try to map that onto the GUI. Most Git GUIs map fairly closely to the underlying git model. Why not just say the truth "I could help you, but it's not my job, so I'm not going to"

Shywim 5y ago
> Most Git GUIs map fairly closely to the underlying git model. Maybe, but most Git GUIs don't provide clear error messages. This is the case of VSCode, which my teamates keep using. When you use Git CLI you can just have the original error message and know what's wrong. I was also burned by sourcetree some years ago where it lost part of my code while doing a merge I didn't even understand. I am not a Git expert. But I can remember the 5 commands needed to do my job every day: `commit`, `push`, `pull`, `rebase`, `checkout`. (you can also add `add` and `status` to the list if you want) They're straighforward, except for `checkout` which is adressed by `switch` for the main usage. If you use it wrong, Git CLI will tell you in most of the cases, and even tell you how to do what you intented to do. Git GUIs will probably tell you something wrong happened and left you at that or try to be more intelligent than you are and do something wrong. > Isn't that just being incredibly lazy. -> this is what I'd answer to do those Git GUIs. > Isn't that just being incredibly lazy. -> this is what I'd say to people who won't write these 5 commands on a sticky note or something and keep it for a month before realizing it wasn't hard to remember once you _commit_ to it and that Git is not hard, minus exceptional problems but Git GUIs absolutely won't help you with these exceptional problems.
- zkldi 5y ago
  You can see the original error message in vscode by clicking "output" and navigating to Git in the dropdown.

cannabis_sam 5y ago

This is my main gripe about git, it’s literally a tool created to suit the guy managing the linux kernel development via mailing lists… What proportion of junior developers are even tangentially working on anything resembling that? Even if it’s exceptionally wonky, I have absolutely no problem introducing git to new devs, as long as it’s alongside a graphical representation (sourcetree or some ide-extension), and as long as I am able to enforce limitations on what commands can be run on the git CLI (or more realistically, disallow push to master, and force every merge/rebase through a review) I’ve personally found that it’s trivial to understand how IDEs integrate git and then adapt the workflow around that, but it’s a complete clusterfuck to let self-proclaimed git wizards loose on a repo without any structure..

BlueTemplar 5y ago
Yeah, hence see the criticisms of git from completely different sides from fossil devs on one hand and pijul dev(s?) on the other. Git probably has its place, but only on very specific, large scale projects, with a crack core team and hundreds of drive-by contributors ?
- tehbeard 5y ago
  > Git probably has its place, but only on very specific, large scale projects, with a crack core team and hundreds of drive-by contributors ? So, hypothetically, if that were the case, what is the recommendation for Small/Medium web agencies?
  - Dudeman112 5y ago
    No versioning at all, of course. On a more serious note, I wonder if GP ever worked on projects outside of large enterprises and is just gatekeeping it. Git is useful on solo projects, for God's sake.
    - mikro2nd 5y ago
      Useful? Yes. Way overkill? Also yes (imho). HG is simpler to understand, has a more consistent CLI, and way better error messaging. Just a pity that it's been so sorely overshadowed by the Swiss Army Chainsaw of VCS. Git can certainly do almost anything/everything anybody might want from a VCS, but, just like a chainsaw, it'll cut your leg off just as soon as it'll cut off the branch you're pruning if you're not fully expert in using it.

z3ncyberpunk 5y ago

So what you're saying is that you're 10 years of experience were you solely to over specialize in a single application utility which ultimately adds up to an absolutely giant pile of inflexibility and incompetence?

detinho 5y ago

Specially when the ide doesn't use standard names and/or introduces new terms. Visual/ide tools to use git are welcome and I use them occasionally. But the cli should be the common denominator.

MarkSweep 5y ago

What about staging lines to the index? I tried ‘git add -i’, but it feels pretty clunky compared to selecting some lines with a mouse in git-gui.

einherjae 5y ago
git add -p
- MarkSweep 5y ago
  Oh thanks, that works fairly well. I still prefer git-gui for this, but this will work nicely when I'm ssh-ed into a machine with no GUI.
  - useragent86 5y ago
    Magit is the king of staging and unstaging. You can even use it on remote systems via TRAMP.

spkm 5y ago

I completely agree. At work we still use SVN, so I'm used to TortoiseSVN which is OK imo. Now for GIT there's TortoiseGIT, but it was such a bad experience. The TortoiseSVN background made it even worse, because things seemed similar, but did totally different things. So weirdly, for SVN I still use Tortoise, but for GIT, I prefer the CLI client.

dmz73 5y ago

If you are using a command line tool for 10 years and don't consider yourself an expert then either you are not using the tool very often or the tool is not well designed. In case of git I would say it is the latter. I mostly use git via tortoise interface and that works well 95% of the time. Other 5% is split between git mv, git branch -D, and trying various commands in order to make git do something simple that can't be done and then giving up. At this stage I see git as necessary evil rather than something that helps me with source version control.

ReFruity 5y ago

That is true, but I think IntelliJ provides you with the list of commands it executed to get there.