15 ms·

Title is horribly incorrect. Simulating git would be more appropriate. I expected this to be a look at other version control systems around today. It's yet an

by _hilro 5y ago

Title is horribly incorrect. Simulating git would be more appropriate. I expected this to be a look at other version control systems around today. It's yet another 'let's recreate git from scratch, kinda' post.

dspillett 5y ago
> I expected... In fairness, it very clearly describes what it is doing in the initial lines: “In this tutorial I’ll try to describe how git works”. So it isn't intending to suggest an alternative for git, but just to show what git does for you and, to an extent, how.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  Then why do we have titles at all if people need to read the "initial lines" to know what it's about? I don't see how that's a reason not to just improve the title. Perhaps the problem was that I also felt like this was not what I expected.
  - dspillett 5y ago
    Perhaps here it needs a better title. In the actual page the short description comes before that heading. Not sure what the best answer would be, use the longer text (too long), keep the first significant heading as title (some like yourself find this misleading), or make something up that fits (some may complain of editorialising or just that they think the alternative title is itself wrong in some way). Or you could look, see it isn't what you want/expect, and move on. It is close enough IMO, not exactly deliberately vague and/or misleading click-bait.
    - pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
      > Not sure what the best answer would be The answer is to not humor people who have unreasonable complaints about things that are their own fault (making assumptions about the content of an article aka judging a book by its cover). The title is fine.
tyingq 5y ago
The article isn't suggesting using this for anything real. It's just using tools that have existed a long time, like diff and patch, to show some of the concepts of version control.
MrGilbert 5y ago
But usually, these go by the line of "We implemented git in [insert favorite language here]". Which is perfectly fine. This is more of a "hey, we have these tools on our system and can use them to simulate git". That's somehow different, at least from my pov.
da_chicken 5y ago
> It's yet another 'let's recreate git from scratch, kinda' post. I don't think that's what it's doing. It's just trying to explain what git does through analogy and example. A remarkable number of people never grok that git is basically just a version control repository for source code (checkout/commit) that itself has been checked into a version control repository for VC repositories (pull/push). There's lots of reasons for it doing that, most of which are grounded in the fact that lots of developers only learn just enough VC to satisfy their immediate coworkers, and otherwise treat it like a magic black box. Did you ever notice that after git became popular that colleges started to teach CS students to use version control? Ever think about why that might be?
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  Schools were teaching version control long before git.
- ryanianian 5y ago
  > Did you ever notice that after git became popular that colleges started to teach CS students to use version control? Ever think about why that might be? Because schools have recognized the need to teach some pragmatic tools in addition to pure theory? I had a "tools" class in undergrad 15 years ago. Learned shell, perl, pcre regexes, make, cvs, subversion, etc. They created the class due to the perception of new-grads being unable to use real-world tools to do real work. Since then, many schools have adopted a similar approach: either a dedicated class or treating many classes as "project"-style classes that use real-world toolsets and SDLCs.
- detaro 5y ago
  > Did you ever notice that after git became popular that colleges started to teach CS students to use version control? Not really, no. Theory-focussed ones still might not. Practical ones did already teach Subversion etc. Some teach git by teaching the full logic behind it, others as "here's some basic commands you need, everything else is on you if you want to learn it, you won't need it to pass".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
itoshkov 5y ago
The actual title is "git-tutorial" :) The "Version Control Without Git" is the title of the first section. But this is my first time using github pages, so I screwed it up.

by _hilro 5y ago

dspillett 5y ago

> I expected... In fairness, it very clearly describes what it is doing in the initial lines: “In this tutorial I’ll try to describe how git works”. So it isn't intending to suggest an alternative for git, but just to show what git does for you and, to an extent, how.

lucb1e 5y ago
Then why do we have titles at all if people need to read the "initial lines" to know what it's about? I don't see how that's a reason not to just improve the title. Perhaps the problem was that I also felt like this was not what I expected.
- dspillett 5y ago
  Perhaps here it needs a better title. In the actual page the short description comes before that heading. Not sure what the best answer would be, use the longer text (too long), keep the first significant heading as title (some like yourself find this misleading), or make something up that fits (some may complain of editorialising or just that they think the alternative title is itself wrong in some way). Or you could look, see it isn't what you want/expect, and move on. It is close enough IMO, not exactly deliberately vague and/or misleading click-bait.
  - pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
    > Not sure what the best answer would be The answer is to not humor people who have unreasonable complaints about things that are their own fault (making assumptions about the content of an article aka judging a book by its cover). The title is fine.

tyingq 5y ago

The article isn't suggesting using this for anything real. It's just using tools that have existed a long time, like diff and patch, to show some of the concepts of version control.

MrGilbert 5y ago

But usually, these go by the line of "We implemented git in [insert favorite language here]". Which is perfectly fine. This is more of a "hey, we have these tools on our system and can use them to simulate git". That's somehow different, at least from my pov.

da_chicken 5y ago

> It's yet another 'let's recreate git from scratch, kinda' post. I don't think that's what it's doing. It's just trying to explain what git does through analogy and example. A remarkable number of people never grok that git is basically just a version control repository for source code (checkout/commit) that itself has been checked into a version control repository for VC repositories (pull/push). There's lots of reasons for it doing that, most of which are grounded in the fact that lots of developers only learn just enough VC to satisfy their immediate coworkers, and otherwise treat it like a magic black box. Did you ever notice that after git became popular that colleges started to teach CS students to use version control? Ever think about why that might be?

compiler-guy 5y ago
Schools were teaching version control long before git.
ryanianian 5y ago
> Did you ever notice that after git became popular that colleges started to teach CS students to use version control? Ever think about why that might be? Because schools have recognized the need to teach some pragmatic tools in addition to pure theory? I had a "tools" class in undergrad 15 years ago. Learned shell, perl, pcre regexes, make, cvs, subversion, etc. They created the class due to the perception of new-grads being unable to use real-world tools to do real work. Since then, many schools have adopted a similar approach: either a dedicated class or treating many classes as "project"-style classes that use real-world toolsets and SDLCs.
detaro 5y ago
> Did you ever notice that after git became popular that colleges started to teach CS students to use version control? Not really, no. Theory-focussed ones still might not. Practical ones did already teach Subversion etc. Some teach git by teaching the full logic behind it, others as "here's some basic commands you need, everything else is on you if you want to learn it, you won't need it to pass".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

itoshkov 5y ago

The actual title is "git-tutorial" :) The "Version Control Without Git" is the title of the first section. But this is my first time using github pages, so I screwed it up.