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I think one of the answer's is sadly just: Mercurial was written in Python. Regardless of what the benchmarked real-world performance of Mercurial was or how w

I think one of the answer's is sadly just: Mercurial was written in Python. Regardless of what the benchmarked real-world performance of Mercurial was or how well optimized it was, there is a class of developer that thinks all Python is slow and may never change their mind about it. Python seemed a good decision: git had a two week headstart and Mercurial was faster to hit many usability milestones (and arguably git may never hit some of them, jk). Mercurial had good Windows support from early on (and doesn't need to ship like half of the GNU userland to do it). I just don't think it should be surprising that some Linux kernel developers dismissed Mercurial off-hand just for being written in Python. I also don't think it is a coincidence that early GitHub ignored Mercurial just about as dismissively. (Ruby and Python aren't entirely "competitors" but there isn't always a lot of shared love between them.)

paulddraper 3y ago
And (a lot of) Git was implemented with Bash scripts. Whether it was the language or not, Mercurial was objectively slower than Git. Nowadays that doesn't matter much, but 15 years ago, it was a much different story.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  The "core" (most of the "plumbing") was always C/C++ and most of those bash scripts (with very few Perl exceptions) were automating GNU C/C++ tools. I've certainly referred to git as a Frankenstein's monster of shell scripts myself, but the sorts of developers that hate Python often don't seem to see bash scripts, they see lots of little invocations of C/C++ tools and "C/C++ core" matters to them. (They also tend to get irrationally angry when you challenge that logic and point out what the C in CPython, the most common Python runtime, stands for.) > Whether it was the language or not, Mercurial was objectively slower than Git. That was not my experience, but I was on Windows at the time. Mercurial "objectively" had good Windows performance. (Not just because it ran at all, versus how much work it took to tame Frankenstein's Monster of shell scripts that was early git to run at all on Windows. But also because it's file system transaction model always fit Windows better.) (ETA: Also, to be fair, my "team" at the time was darcs and my opinions on VCS performance at the time were from a very different perspective.)

paulddraper 3y ago

And (a lot of) Git was implemented with Bash scripts. Whether it was the language or not, Mercurial was objectively slower than Git. Nowadays that doesn't matter much, but 15 years ago, it was a much different story.

WorldMaker 3y ago
The "core" (most of the "plumbing") was always C/C++ and most of those bash scripts (with very few Perl exceptions) were automating GNU C/C++ tools. I've certainly referred to git as a Frankenstein's monster of shell scripts myself, but the sorts of developers that hate Python often don't seem to see bash scripts, they see lots of little invocations of C/C++ tools and "C/C++ core" matters to them. (They also tend to get irrationally angry when you challenge that logic and point out what the C in CPython, the most common Python runtime, stands for.) > Whether it was the language or not, Mercurial was objectively slower than Git. That was not my experience, but I was on Windows at the time. Mercurial "objectively" had good Windows performance. (Not just because it ran at all, versus how much work it took to tame Frankenstein's Monster of shell scripts that was early git to run at all on Windows. But also because it's file system transaction model always fit Windows better.) (ETA: Also, to be fair, my "team" at the time was darcs and my opinions on VCS performance at the time were from a very different perspective.)