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I hate to use the cliche of Ford and the faster horse, but sometimes figuring out whether or not you need something involves trying it. It's very easy to dismis

I hate to use the cliche of Ford and the faster horse, but sometimes figuring out whether or not you need something involves trying it. It's very easy to dismiss things you're not familiar with as things you don't need. For the longest time for example I thought I didn't need the power of Emacs. I finally tried it for Lisp development and now it's definitely something I need. Similarly back when I used Windows I didn't think I needed Linux for anything. I've felt similarly about Git. I'm orders of magnitude more productive than when I used svn. To me the time investment has been well worth it.

jacobscott 18y ago
For me, there's a modest amount of activation energy associated with trying a new SCM. For work, there's an INCREDIBLY large amount of activation energy to move all of the developers, scripts, etc, off svn (although we don't develop open source). I think "you just need to try it" is the wrong approach. I want to know /why/ I should try it. I want to see my work flows called out and the minutes/hours I will save by switching from svn to git explained clearly. Svn certainly has its pain points, but I haven't seen a concise, easily digestible outline of what git (or its ilk) will get me.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  Branching off of your argument, there's a significant amount of activation energy to start a new svn repo, compared to mercurial or git. I find that when all I need to do upfront is type "hg init", I end up using VC for far more. For example, all the dotfiles in my home directory, my window manager setup (a somewhat-patched dwm), and my bin dir are in an hg repo. It makes "moving in" to a new computer (and syncing with my laptop) much easier. You can use mercurial as if it were svn, just an svn that isn't a pain in the ass to set up, and that makes free backups for you automatically. Anything past that is just a bonus.
  - andrewf 18y ago
    andrew-desktop:~/x> svnadmin create ~/repo/x andrew-desktop:~/x> svn import file:///home/andrew/repo/x/trunk Adding y Adding y/example.yy Adding example.txt Committed revision 1. Sure, it's about 10 times as many keystrokes, but it's not a great burden.
- cstejerean 18y ago
  Actually there is zero effort required to use git in an environment that already uses svn, git integrates incredibly well with svn. "I want to know /why/ I should try it. I want to see my work flows called out and the minutes/hours I will save by switching from svn to git explained clearly." Sounds like you're waiting for a salesperson. Good luck with that.
  - jacobscott 18y ago
    Maybe salesperson shouldn't be a dirty word then. I think the burden is on the creator (and or proponents) of software to explain to others why they should use it. Would you argue otherwise?
DanielBMarkham 18y ago
I've been watching the tech industry for some time, and I've seen a lot of different versions of the same thing. As a user of Groove, I'm an evangelist when it comes to P2P/Non-server file repositories -- we need to see a lot more apps like these. But looking at it long-term, 99% of these "improvements" are cool, make a few operations easier, but aren't worth the investment in terms of just using the tools as a way to get somewhere. As techies, we're constantly getting sold the bells and whistles and constantly losing track of what the big picture is. Whenever somebody says "you don't know the feature you want until you try the app" that's kind of a red flag for me. If I know the features I want and am happy with what I have, what, aside from "wow!" are new features going to get me? Most likely they will appeal to my technical side, not my business-get-things-done side.
- cstejerean 18y ago
  Try out the new features and see for your self if they get you anything. They might just be "wow" features, or they might save you significant amounts of time in ways you couldn't have imagined before. Unless of course your imagination is far above average and you have the rare skill of knowing in advance exactly what you want and how you want it to work.
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    Dude. I got something like 30 or 40 tools and toolsets that I use on a typical project. For each of these categories, there are multiple contenders. My source control system does what I want it to do. It doesn't get in the way of production. I understand p2p offline/online editing but we don't need that right now. I come on HN to play. I've already spent too much time just talking about the tool than the value of the tool itself. As a value provider, I need to concentrate on my users and how much value I can provide for them. There are lots of distractions.

jacobscott 18y ago

For me, there's a modest amount of activation energy associated with trying a new SCM. For work, there's an INCREDIBLY large amount of activation energy to move all of the developers, scripts, etc, off svn (although we don't develop open source). I think "you just need to try it" is the wrong approach. I want to know /why/ I should try it. I want to see my work flows called out and the minutes/hours I will save by switching from svn to git explained clearly. Svn certainly has its pain points, but I haven't seen a concise, easily digestible outline of what git (or its ilk) will get me.

silentbicycle 18y ago
Branching off of your argument, there's a significant amount of activation energy to start a new svn repo, compared to mercurial or git. I find that when all I need to do upfront is type "hg init", I end up using VC for far more. For example, all the dotfiles in my home directory, my window manager setup (a somewhat-patched dwm), and my bin dir are in an hg repo. It makes "moving in" to a new computer (and syncing with my laptop) much easier. You can use mercurial as if it were svn, just an svn that isn't a pain in the ass to set up, and that makes free backups for you automatically. Anything past that is just a bonus.
- andrewf 18y ago
  andrew-desktop:~/x> svnadmin create ~/repo/x andrew-desktop:~/x> svn import file:///home/andrew/repo/x/trunk Adding y Adding y/example.yy Adding example.txt Committed revision 1. Sure, it's about 10 times as many keystrokes, but it's not a great burden.
cstejerean 18y ago
Actually there is zero effort required to use git in an environment that already uses svn, git integrates incredibly well with svn. "I want to know /why/ I should try it. I want to see my work flows called out and the minutes/hours I will save by switching from svn to git explained clearly." Sounds like you're waiting for a salesperson. Good luck with that.
- jacobscott 18y ago
  Maybe salesperson shouldn't be a dirty word then. I think the burden is on the creator (and or proponents) of software to explain to others why they should use it. Would you argue otherwise?

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

I've been watching the tech industry for some time, and I've seen a lot of different versions of the same thing. As a user of Groove, I'm an evangelist when it comes to P2P/Non-server file repositories -- we need to see a lot more apps like these. But looking at it long-term, 99% of these "improvements" are cool, make a few operations easier, but aren't worth the investment in terms of just using the tools as a way to get somewhere. As techies, we're constantly getting sold the bells and whistles and constantly losing track of what the big picture is. Whenever somebody says "you don't know the feature you want until you try the app" that's kind of a red flag for me. If I know the features I want and am happy with what I have, what, aside from "wow!" are new features going to get me? Most likely they will appeal to my technical side, not my business-get-things-done side.

cstejerean 18y ago
Try out the new features and see for your self if they get you anything. They might just be "wow" features, or they might save you significant amounts of time in ways you couldn't have imagined before. Unless of course your imagination is far above average and you have the rare skill of knowing in advance exactly what you want and how you want it to work.
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Dude. I got something like 30 or 40 tools and toolsets that I use on a typical project. For each of these categories, there are multiple contenders. My source control system does what I want it to do. It doesn't get in the way of production. I understand p2p offline/online editing but we don't need that right now. I come on HN to play. I've already spent too much time just talking about the tool than the value of the tool itself. As a value provider, I need to concentrate on my users and how much value I can provide for them. There are lots of distractions.