5 ms·

That's a little misleading. Git was created in 10 days in the same way that Apple was created in a garage in a month. Or the way that Facebook was created in a

That's a little misleading. Git was created in 10 days in the same way that Apple was created in a garage in a month. Or the way that Facebook was created in a dorm in one night. Git v0.0.1 might have been created in 10 days, and the foundational ideas were certainly excellent. And it's amazing that two of the biggest contributions to the world of software came from the same person.

avg_dev 3y ago
well, this quote from Linus Torvalds is in the article: > "So I’d like to stress that while it really came together in just about ten days or so (at which point I did my first kernel commit using git), it wasn’t like it was some kind of mad dash of coding. The actual amount of that early code is actually fairly small, it all depended on getting the basic ideas right. And that I had been mulling over for a while before the whole project started. I’d seen the problems others had. I’d seen what I wanted to avoid doing."
- rob74 3y ago
  Well, the fact that he and the other Linux maintainers had previously used (and were intimately familiar with) BitKeeper, and thus had a good idea of what their new FLOSS DVCS should look like, probably also helped. Not saying that he copied BitKeeper 1:1, but if you look at BitKeeper usage examples (http://www.bitkeeper.org/ http://www.bitkeeper.org/), they do look familiar, don't they? BTW, BitKeeper is now open source - and development seems to have largely ceased...
  - rlnorthcutt 3y ago
    Honestly, I think that is the key. He didn't just create Git out of thin air... he spent alot of time thinking about what he wanted and using something that gave him a conceptual foundation. 10 days of writing code is impressive, but there would many,many days of thinking that preceded it.
  - avg_dev 3y ago
    Well, this is too is pretty clearly highlighted in the article... I mean it doesn't really matter too much, but > He aimed to create a tool that was: > Distributed: [...] > Compatible: The new tool would incorporate as many features and workflows as BitKeeper. > Secure: [...] and there is another quote from Linus Torvalds contained in the article: > 'Well, it was obviously designed for our workflow, so that is part of it. I’ve already mentioned the whole “distributed” part many times, but it bears repeating. But it was also designed to be efficient enough for a biggish project like Linux, and it was designed to do things that people considered “hard” before git – because those are the things I do every day.'
Blikkentrekker 3y ago
> And it's amazing that two of the biggest contributions to the world of software came from the same person. That's not that amazing at all, because the fame and weight of being the creator of the former led to the adoption of the other as it became the official version control management system on which Linux was developed. — These are not two independent results. If someone completely unknown developed Git 0.01 in 10 days, it would probably have stayed relatively obscure, and the reason for it's quality is because it became so famous due to being tied with Linux, attracting many developers.
- pbreit 3y ago
  > not that amazing at all Are there any other examples that come even close?
  - kramerger 3y ago
    Brian Kernighan
  - Scaevolus 3y ago
    FFMPEG & QEMU from Bellard, perhaps?
    - samspenc 3y ago
      Would love to learn more about this - were they created in a similarly expedited timeline? What did that look like?
  - Blikkentrekker 3y ago
    I'm fairly certain a lot of very influential software came from the hands of Bill Gates as well such as the FAT filesystem which is still used, the original MSDOS and BASIC Interpreter which made a huge impact. Of course, that's all mostly because much of that was bundled with the original MSDOS. Also, in terms of video games, a great deal of innovative techniques and games game from John D. Carmac, which of course also is a result from Id Software pushing it.
  - 3y ago
dclowd9901 3y ago
Not for nothing, but after the first big contribution from a person, aren’t successive contributions from that person more likely to be big and successful?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lusus_naturae 3y ago
  Not necessarily, there are plenty of examples where earlier success did not lead to future success. A recent example that comes to mind is CloudKitchens? I could be wrong about CK, so happy to learn differently.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    >there are plenty of examples where earlier success did not lead to future success Unless there are more examples of that than of a lack of prior success not leading to future success, it doesn't seem like counterevidence.
    - lusus_naturae 3y ago
      I am not sure why you're stipulating that there needs to be a threshold of minimal examples to present a contradictory pov, or why you need those counter examples to be greater in number. Most mammals don't have bills, but platypuses exist. Should we not describe a paltypus as a mammal simply because there are not enough examples of this type of animal? Or maybe I misunderstand your point.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        Because the parent didn't say "prior success guarantees future success".
        lusus_naturae 3y ago
lossolo 3y ago
Indeed, if you look at the first Git commit, you can see that it's around 1k lines of code, and it's so basic that you can't compare it to today's Git. Much of it is also devoted to memory management in C, rather than actual business logic. You could achieve the same functionality in just a few hundred lines of code in Go or Rust today.

avg_dev 3y ago

well, this quote from Linus Torvalds is in the article: > "So I’d like to stress that while it really came together in just about ten days or so (at which point I did my first kernel commit using git), it wasn’t like it was some kind of mad dash of coding. The actual amount of that early code is actually fairly small, it all depended on getting the basic ideas right. And that I had been mulling over for a while before the whole project started. I’d seen the problems others had. I’d seen what I wanted to avoid doing."

rob74 3y ago
Well, the fact that he and the other Linux maintainers had previously used (and were intimately familiar with) BitKeeper, and thus had a good idea of what their new FLOSS DVCS should look like, probably also helped. Not saying that he copied BitKeeper 1:1, but if you look at BitKeeper usage examples (http://www.bitkeeper.org/ http://www.bitkeeper.org/), they do look familiar, don't they? BTW, BitKeeper is now open source - and development seems to have largely ceased...
- rlnorthcutt 3y ago
  Honestly, I think that is the key. He didn't just create Git out of thin air... he spent alot of time thinking about what he wanted and using something that gave him a conceptual foundation. 10 days of writing code is impressive, but there would many,many days of thinking that preceded it.
- avg_dev 3y ago
  Well, this is too is pretty clearly highlighted in the article... I mean it doesn't really matter too much, but > He aimed to create a tool that was: > Distributed: [...] > Compatible: The new tool would incorporate as many features and workflows as BitKeeper. > Secure: [...] and there is another quote from Linus Torvalds contained in the article: > 'Well, it was obviously designed for our workflow, so that is part of it. I’ve already mentioned the whole “distributed” part many times, but it bears repeating. But it was also designed to be efficient enough for a biggish project like Linux, and it was designed to do things that people considered “hard” before git – because those are the things I do every day.'

Blikkentrekker 3y ago

> And it's amazing that two of the biggest contributions to the world of software came from the same person. That's not that amazing at all, because the fame and weight of being the creator of the former led to the adoption of the other as it became the official version control management system on which Linux was developed. — These are not two independent results. If someone completely unknown developed Git 0.01 in 10 days, it would probably have stayed relatively obscure, and the reason for it's quality is because it became so famous due to being tied with Linux, attracting many developers.

pbreit 3y ago
> not that amazing at all Are there any other examples that come even close?
- kramerger 3y ago
  Brian Kernighan
- Scaevolus 3y ago
  FFMPEG & QEMU from Bellard, perhaps?
  - samspenc 3y ago
    Would love to learn more about this - were they created in a similarly expedited timeline? What did that look like?
- Blikkentrekker 3y ago
  I'm fairly certain a lot of very influential software came from the hands of Bill Gates as well such as the FAT filesystem which is still used, the original MSDOS and BASIC Interpreter which made a huge impact. Of course, that's all mostly because much of that was bundled with the original MSDOS. Also, in terms of video games, a great deal of innovative techniques and games game from John D. Carmac, which of course also is a result from Id Software pushing it.
- 3y ago

dclowd9901 3y ago

Not for nothing, but after the first big contribution from a person, aren’t successive contributions from that person more likely to be big and successful?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lusus_naturae 3y ago
Not necessarily, there are plenty of examples where earlier success did not lead to future success. A recent example that comes to mind is CloudKitchens? I could be wrong about CK, so happy to learn differently.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >there are plenty of examples where earlier success did not lead to future success Unless there are more examples of that than of a lack of prior success not leading to future success, it doesn't seem like counterevidence.
  - lusus_naturae 3y ago
    I am not sure why you're stipulating that there needs to be a threshold of minimal examples to present a contradictory pov, or why you need those counter examples to be greater in number. Most mammals don't have bills, but platypuses exist. Should we not describe a paltypus as a mammal simply because there are not enough examples of this type of animal? Or maybe I misunderstand your point.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Because the parent didn't say "prior success guarantees future success".
      - lusus_naturae 3y ago

lossolo 3y ago

Indeed, if you look at the first Git commit, you can see that it's around 1k lines of code, and it's so basic that you can't compare it to today's Git. Much of it is also devoted to memory management in C, rather than actual business logic. You could achieve the same functionality in just a few hundred lines of code in Go or Rust today.