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I see it more like someone asked for a cabinet and hired you, the carpenter, to plane, route, chamfer, mitre, join, hammer, nail, screw and glue the wood into p

I see it more like someone asked for a cabinet and hired you, the carpenter, to plane, route, chamfer, mitre, join, hammer, nail, screw and glue the wood into place. You absolutely need to know the right tools and techniques, of which there are many. For instance, nails and screws are not interchangeable, and they're made with a variety of metals and coatings for specific applications. Just about anyone can hammer a nail into a piece of wood. It is quite difficult to put together a high quality finished piece of woodwork. Same is true for software.

PlunderBunny 3y ago
I can sort-of see your point, but (stretching the analogy way too far), imagine I'm the interior decorator and I'm asking for a cabinet among other things. My expertise is not in making the cabinet. Relating it back to being a software developer, my expertise is in the problem domain and the business logic. I don't think Git is stupid or fundamentally wrong, just that the interface we're all using (even the GUI interfaces) are just thin veneers over the underlying API, which is confusing to many people, and that Git could be more productive for most developers when we have an abstraction that is easier to understand. I've seen people much smarter than me fumbling around to solve problems with Git.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > Relating it back to being a software developer, my expertise is in the problem domain and the business logic. That's your problem right there. You're a craftsman. You have three sets of inputs: raw materials, designs and tools. You've chosen to focus on raw materials and designs, and have decided that mastery of the tools (or some subset of the tools) is not important. A cabinet maker who said "my expertise is in complex corner joinery and standalone rectangular forms" would be laughed at if they also added "i find japanese saws and routers problematic". Yes, tools are tricky. Tools are hard. But tools are an equal part of the task triangle, and you owe it yourself to build up your own scaffolding of understanding for the tools as you do for the other components.
  - PlunderBunny 3y ago
    Sure, a source code repository is an essential tool. But if you have a company that has a room (or several rooms) full of developers that work on a product, the expertise (arguably, the whole raison d'être) of that company is in the things that only they do. The tools are necessary, but you don't want every developer to have to devote any more time than is necessary to learning/using a tool. I'm not arguing against source control, I'm arguing against a tool that so complicated and is obviously so hard to master might work against us as much as it work for us.

PlunderBunny 3y ago

I can sort-of see your point, but (stretching the analogy way too far), imagine I'm the interior decorator and I'm asking for a cabinet among other things. My expertise is not in making the cabinet. Relating it back to being a software developer, my expertise is in the problem domain and the business logic. I don't think Git is stupid or fundamentally wrong, just that the interface we're all using (even the GUI interfaces) are just thin veneers over the underlying API, which is confusing to many people, and that Git could be more productive for most developers when we have an abstraction that is easier to understand. I've seen people much smarter than me fumbling around to solve problems with Git.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> Relating it back to being a software developer, my expertise is in the problem domain and the business logic. That's your problem right there. You're a craftsman. You have three sets of inputs: raw materials, designs and tools. You've chosen to focus on raw materials and designs, and have decided that mastery of the tools (or some subset of the tools) is not important. A cabinet maker who said "my expertise is in complex corner joinery and standalone rectangular forms" would be laughed at if they also added "i find japanese saws and routers problematic". Yes, tools are tricky. Tools are hard. But tools are an equal part of the task triangle, and you owe it yourself to build up your own scaffolding of understanding for the tools as you do for the other components.
- PlunderBunny 3y ago
  Sure, a source code repository is an essential tool. But if you have a company that has a room (or several rooms) full of developers that work on a product, the expertise (arguably, the whole raison d'être) of that company is in the things that only they do. The tools are necessary, but you don't want every developer to have to devote any more time than is necessary to learning/using a tool. I'm not arguing against source control, I'm arguing against a tool that so complicated and is obviously so hard to master might work against us as much as it work for us.