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I don't know why people complain about git being hard to use. If you have a basic understanding of how branching works and aren't a complete dunce with CLI tool

I don't know why people complain about git being hard to use. If you have a basic understanding of how branching works and aren't a complete dunce with CLI tools, it's very simple. It's also one of the best CLI's I've ever come across. People over complicate it - In 5 years now as a full time SWE I barely ever use commands other than the basic ones - git pull, git commit, git add/remove, git push, git merge. Occasionally annoying conflicts happen on merge that you can eyeball and fix fairly trivially.

icedchai 4y ago
Git is simple for you because you've been using it for so long. If you've worked with any junior people, you know a lot can go wrong. Recent small example: merge conflicts being committed.
zaphar 4y ago
I only need to reach for fancy git commands when a colleague come to me with a broken repo. How exactly they land in these situations is not always clear to me. But the frequency that it happens suggests something is confusing at least one segment of the user base.
glenngillen 4y ago
My version of the "git is hard to use" is because so much of it doesn't feel intuitive. I use it literally every day and can use the 5 commands you list with almost zero thought at all. They probably account for about 90% of my usage and everything is fine. But then... I need to fix a merge that has gone wrong, recover a commit that a mistakenly removed in a squash, delete a remote branch, undo a bisect that I mistakenly flagged as good/bad, or any number of the things that I've had to do multiple times that make up the other 10% of my usage. And absolutely none of them can I remember how to do, nor do I have any confidence that I could stumble onto the correct syntax. The interface just isn't ergonomic. And so I inevitably turn to google/stackoverflow. I can't think of any other examples of something I use so much where I have this problem. Conversely I had to use the Docker and Heroku CLIs recently, having used neither for probably a year or so, and managed to remember/stumble my way through pretty easily without the need to look up help or external sources.
never_inline 4y ago
> I barely ever use commands other than the basic ones - git pull, git commit, git add/remove, git push, git merge I routinely use checkout / switch, rebase, diff, cherry-pick, stash, revert, git status (on CLI). They are very useful. I don't know where "5 commands" meme comes from.

icedchai 4y ago

Git is simple for you because you've been using it for so long. If you've worked with any junior people, you know a lot can go wrong. Recent small example: merge conflicts being committed.

zaphar 4y ago

I only need to reach for fancy git commands when a colleague come to me with a broken repo. How exactly they land in these situations is not always clear to me. But the frequency that it happens suggests something is confusing at least one segment of the user base.

glenngillen 4y ago

My version of the "git is hard to use" is because so much of it doesn't feel intuitive. I use it literally every day and can use the 5 commands you list with almost zero thought at all. They probably account for about 90% of my usage and everything is fine. But then... I need to fix a merge that has gone wrong, recover a commit that a mistakenly removed in a squash, delete a remote branch, undo a bisect that I mistakenly flagged as good/bad, or any number of the things that I've had to do multiple times that make up the other 10% of my usage. And absolutely none of them can I remember how to do, nor do I have any confidence that I could stumble onto the correct syntax. The interface just isn't ergonomic. And so I inevitably turn to google/stackoverflow. I can't think of any other examples of something I use so much where I have this problem. Conversely I had to use the Docker and Heroku CLIs recently, having used neither for probably a year or so, and managed to remember/stumble my way through pretty easily without the need to look up help or external sources.

never_inline 4y ago

> I barely ever use commands other than the basic ones - git pull, git commit, git add/remove, git push, git merge I routinely use checkout / switch, rebase, diff, cherry-pick, stash, revert, git status (on CLI). They are very useful. I don't know where "5 commands" meme comes from.