3 ms·

The reflog also won't help you recover things you manually delete before you `git add` them. Or that were outside of the git repo. Or that you written on a piec

The reflog also won't help you recover things you manually delete before you `git add` them. Or that were outside of the git repo. Or that you written on a piece of paper that you threw away. To someone who has a right mental model of git, all of these should be just as obvious. If you didn't stage your things, they were never in your repo.

littlestymaar 4y ago
> Or that were outside of the git repo. Or that you written on a piece of paper that you threw away. Those aren't useful analogies as git cannot remove them in the first place. It's normal for a user to expect a tool to have an “undo” mechanism for its commands (with a prompt “this action is irreversible, do you want to proceed” for the rare actions where the action have to be destructive, like when running the git garbage collector manually) I know exactly why git behaves like it does, but that doesn't make its footgun less of a nuisance. And it's all about the UX, there's zero technical reason that would prevent git from saving your work as a temporary commit before deleting it, in a way that would make it recoverable, just a lack of user empathy.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  --hard is supposed to be your “this action is potentially lossy, do you want to proceed” acceptance. Same with --force. The problem is people teaching git, not git itself in this instance. Don't teach people to use git reset --hard, have them use named stashes. Easy recovery, same goal achieved.
  - littlestymaar 4y ago
    > have them use named stashes. Easy recovery, same goal achieved. It's absolutely not the same thing. If you just want to discard the modifications you have, then stashes are fine. But if you want to move a branch to another location, then you have to use reset --hard, and then when you have an unsuspected `git reset --hard` in your shell history, the shell auto-completion can screw you pretty quick. That's the difference between a prompt and a cli option, the first one doesn't appear in your shell history, so you're never going to have it pre-filled by mistake. > The problem is people teaching git, When you have a recurring problem with people teaching “something”, then the said “something” has a bad UX.

littlestymaar 4y ago

> Or that were outside of the git repo. Or that you written on a piece of paper that you threw away. Those aren't useful analogies as git cannot remove them in the first place. It's normal for a user to expect a tool to have an “undo” mechanism for its commands (with a prompt “this action is irreversible, do you want to proceed” for the rare actions where the action have to be destructive, like when running the git garbage collector manually) I know exactly why git behaves like it does, but that doesn't make its footgun less of a nuisance. And it's all about the UX, there's zero technical reason that would prevent git from saving your work as a temporary commit before deleting it, in a way that would make it recoverable, just a lack of user empathy.

OkayPhysicist 4y ago
--hard is supposed to be your “this action is potentially lossy, do you want to proceed” acceptance. Same with --force. The problem is people teaching git, not git itself in this instance. Don't teach people to use git reset --hard, have them use named stashes. Easy recovery, same goal achieved.
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  > have them use named stashes. Easy recovery, same goal achieved. It's absolutely not the same thing. If you just want to discard the modifications you have, then stashes are fine. But if you want to move a branch to another location, then you have to use reset --hard, and then when you have an unsuspected `git reset --hard` in your shell history, the shell auto-completion can screw you pretty quick. That's the difference between a prompt and a cli option, the first one doesn't appear in your shell history, so you're never going to have it pre-filled by mistake. > The problem is people teaching git, When you have a recurring problem with people teaching “something”, then the said “something” has a bad UX.