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Learning the underlying model behind git is well worth the effort. For me watching Steve Smith's talk - Knowledge is Power: Getting out of Trouble by Understa

Learning the underlying model behind git is well worth the effort. For me watching Steve Smith's talk - Knowledge is Power: Getting out of Trouble by Understanding Git - was a lightbulb moment. Here's a 2019 presentation of that talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHLcZGi3yMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHLcZGi3yMQ

tharkun__ 4y ago
I think this is what can confuse people. We have to face the facts that not everyone will need or be able to grok all of what goes on in git and what makes the car go forward. We can all drive that car still! Take the recursive merging stuff around minute 39. Do I need to know why git's model for merging is so much better and how it works its magic? I don't think so. It's an implementation detail. Do I need to know how a gearbox works to drive stick shift? I have never thought of git as a bramble (tree worked fine for me :)) but the thing I always tell people about too is the labels part. What I think is enough for people to realize is that it's just like say SVN or CVS or any other source control mechanism in that there's a tree (bramble) of commits and then every commit can just be pointed to by a label. I can move those labels around any which way I want. Everything else follows from that on a surface level that is the only thing required to work with git in most situations, including some advanced ones. You don't need to know why certain operations in git are faster, better, have less conflicts or how they work internally. You just need to know what they do and when to apply them. I don't need to know why I can't make my car start or switch gears without pushing down the clutch. I just need to know when to push the clutch, i.e. if I want to start the car, push it. When I want to switch gears push it (well, mostly, on cars you want to last a while still lol). Of course some people won't even be able to learn how to drive stick shift and can only ever drive automatic.
- leephillips 4y ago
  To a large extent, yes. But when you find yourself stopped at a red light on a steep upgrade, and some idiot behind you decides to wait for the light three inches from your back bumper, things will go better when the light turns green if you have a decent mental model of the physical mechanism of the clutch. Sometimes you want to let those abstractions leak a bit.
  - tomohawk 4y ago
    They'll go even better for you if you just have good skill with the clutch - regardless of how it works or not.
    - macintux 4y ago
      Agreed, I’ve only recently learned (at a high level) how a clutch works, and it has zero impact on how I use it on the street. Even off-road, I really only need to know to not ride it all the time.
  - tharkun__ 4y ago
    Actually you don't need a mental model of the clutch at all for that. You just need to know how to handle steep inclines. There's a technique for that. All you need to know for that is the fact that on a steep incline you will go back a bit until your clutch has a chance to get you moving forward against the hill and that in this case you need to apply that technique. Like knowing when to use rebase, when to use cherry-pick etc. Now why you will roll back on the steep hill is not something a normal operator of a car needs to understand. Neither the clutch part nor the gravity one actually. Also, if he's literally 3 inches, I would say the best approach is to slowly ease off the brakes until you actually touch the other car but do it so slowly that it's not an impact. All without even pushing the clutch. Then you don't even need to use the brake while pushing the gas pedal trick, because the guy behind you is your brake pedal ;)
  - CobaltFire 4y ago
    For a group of people supposedly primarily in the SV area this is a scary comment thread. I learned to drive stick in the Bay Area and the way everyone I know there drives stick on an incline is to use the parking brake with a second hand when letting off the brake and letting out the clutch. Now, when you get good you can stop doing this for most, but for really steep streets (I now live in San Diego and we have a couple; Laurel being one) it’s still an excellent skill to have.
    - tharkun__ 4y ago
- rfiat 4y ago
  > Do I need to know how a gearbox works to drive stick shift? No, but it helps. If I treat my car's powertrain as a black box then it won't be intuitive that: * I shouldn't slip the clutch to hold my car on an incline. * Blipping the throttle gives me smoother downshifts. * Double clutching lets me shift from 2nd to 1st while rolling. * I can use the engine to slow my descent on longer hills and avoid brake fade * I should park the car in gear for safety * etc. Whether it's better for a given person to memorise that list of facts or to understand the concepts behind them would depend on how much they drive. As a developer I've found it helpful to gain an understanding of the tools I use daily beyond "here's the commands to copy/paste when you want to do xyz".
  - tharkun__ 4y ago
    It may not have sounded like it but I'm actually going to agree with some of this. We might be on a different part of the gradient so to speak. Maybe you can find a good analogy but at least from my point of view the gearbox analogy is falling short now and we'd need a different one or look at git commands one by one :) Like you say, you can just remember those things. In fact 4 out of those 6 were taught in driving school and you had to remember them. One I only learned because trucks still needed that (double clutching while shifting - not just your case, just in general) but cars didn't when I learned. I personally don't like copy and pasting commands like that but I see a lot of people doing that even for stuff that should be second nature because you need it all the time. I think - to stay in the analogy - for me this is the difference between knowing that I should engine break and how to do it when I want to slow down vs. having a piece of paper in the glove compartment that I pull out and check for what to do and how every time I approach a red light ;) I'm also someone that likes to get an understanding of the things that I use and do every day. The thing is that there are so many things we use and do all the time that I think (almost) everyone just has to keep a certain level of abstraction away from many things, because there are just so many rabbit holes out there and it's not beneficial for most people to have explored every single rabbit hole all the way to the end (the 'gradient'). Git commit graphs are a DAG and lots of cool things can be done with DAGs, most of which I totally forgot about since I learned about and enjoyed them in university and have never needed them again at that level. It's good to know they exist and be able to dig in when needed/wanted.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
thanks, I'll be watching this. seems like I get myself in trouble every couple of months and have to zip up a directory, do a fresh checkout and overlay it. Seems sometimes something gets lost and it will refuse to push to origin on a branch that I've had checked out for a while. yet if I do a fresh checkout (and losing a bit of history as I like to commit locally a lot and squash just before I'm ready to push to git repo.

tharkun__ 4y ago

I think this is what can confuse people. We have to face the facts that not everyone will need or be able to grok all of what goes on in git and what makes the car go forward. We can all drive that car still! Take the recursive merging stuff around minute 39. Do I need to know why git's model for merging is so much better and how it works its magic? I don't think so. It's an implementation detail. Do I need to know how a gearbox works to drive stick shift? I have never thought of git as a bramble (tree worked fine for me :)) but the thing I always tell people about too is the labels part. What I think is enough for people to realize is that it's just like say SVN or CVS or any other source control mechanism in that there's a tree (bramble) of commits and then every commit can just be pointed to by a label. I can move those labels around any which way I want. Everything else follows from that on a surface level that is the only thing required to work with git in most situations, including some advanced ones. You don't need to know why certain operations in git are faster, better, have less conflicts or how they work internally. You just need to know what they do and when to apply them. I don't need to know why I can't make my car start or switch gears without pushing down the clutch. I just need to know when to push the clutch, i.e. if I want to start the car, push it. When I want to switch gears push it (well, mostly, on cars you want to last a while still lol). Of course some people won't even be able to learn how to drive stick shift and can only ever drive automatic.

leephillips 4y ago
To a large extent, yes. But when you find yourself stopped at a red light on a steep upgrade, and some idiot behind you decides to wait for the light three inches from your back bumper, things will go better when the light turns green if you have a decent mental model of the physical mechanism of the clutch. Sometimes you want to let those abstractions leak a bit.
- tomohawk 4y ago
  They'll go even better for you if you just have good skill with the clutch - regardless of how it works or not.
  - macintux 4y ago
    Agreed, I’ve only recently learned (at a high level) how a clutch works, and it has zero impact on how I use it on the street. Even off-road, I really only need to know to not ride it all the time.
- tharkun__ 4y ago
  Actually you don't need a mental model of the clutch at all for that. You just need to know how to handle steep inclines. There's a technique for that. All you need to know for that is the fact that on a steep incline you will go back a bit until your clutch has a chance to get you moving forward against the hill and that in this case you need to apply that technique. Like knowing when to use rebase, when to use cherry-pick etc. Now why you will roll back on the steep hill is not something a normal operator of a car needs to understand. Neither the clutch part nor the gravity one actually. Also, if he's literally 3 inches, I would say the best approach is to slowly ease off the brakes until you actually touch the other car but do it so slowly that it's not an impact. All without even pushing the clutch. Then you don't even need to use the brake while pushing the gas pedal trick, because the guy behind you is your brake pedal ;)
- CobaltFire 4y ago
  For a group of people supposedly primarily in the SV area this is a scary comment thread. I learned to drive stick in the Bay Area and the way everyone I know there drives stick on an incline is to use the parking brake with a second hand when letting off the brake and letting out the clutch. Now, when you get good you can stop doing this for most, but for really steep streets (I now live in San Diego and we have a couple; Laurel being one) it’s still an excellent skill to have.
  - tharkun__ 4y ago
rfiat 4y ago
> Do I need to know how a gearbox works to drive stick shift? No, but it helps. If I treat my car's powertrain as a black box then it won't be intuitive that: * I shouldn't slip the clutch to hold my car on an incline. * Blipping the throttle gives me smoother downshifts. * Double clutching lets me shift from 2nd to 1st while rolling. * I can use the engine to slow my descent on longer hills and avoid brake fade * I should park the car in gear for safety * etc. Whether it's better for a given person to memorise that list of facts or to understand the concepts behind them would depend on how much they drive. As a developer I've found it helpful to gain an understanding of the tools I use daily beyond "here's the commands to copy/paste when you want to do xyz".
- tharkun__ 4y ago
  It may not have sounded like it but I'm actually going to agree with some of this. We might be on a different part of the gradient so to speak. Maybe you can find a good analogy but at least from my point of view the gearbox analogy is falling short now and we'd need a different one or look at git commands one by one :) Like you say, you can just remember those things. In fact 4 out of those 6 were taught in driving school and you had to remember them. One I only learned because trucks still needed that (double clutching while shifting - not just your case, just in general) but cars didn't when I learned. I personally don't like copy and pasting commands like that but I see a lot of people doing that even for stuff that should be second nature because you need it all the time. I think - to stay in the analogy - for me this is the difference between knowing that I should engine break and how to do it when I want to slow down vs. having a piece of paper in the glove compartment that I pull out and check for what to do and how every time I approach a red light ;) I'm also someone that likes to get an understanding of the things that I use and do every day. The thing is that there are so many things we use and do all the time that I think (almost) everyone just has to keep a certain level of abstraction away from many things, because there are just so many rabbit holes out there and it's not beneficial for most people to have explored every single rabbit hole all the way to the end (the 'gradient'). Git commit graphs are a DAG and lots of cool things can be done with DAGs, most of which I totally forgot about since I learned about and enjoyed them in university and have never needed them again at that level. It's good to know they exist and be able to dig in when needed/wanted.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

thanks, I'll be watching this. seems like I get myself in trouble every couple of months and have to zip up a directory, do a fresh checkout and overlay it. Seems sometimes something gets lost and it will refuse to push to origin on a branch that I've had checked out for a while. yet if I do a fresh checkout (and losing a bit of history as I like to commit locally a lot and squash just before I'm ready to push to git repo.