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It seems that git is the new regex. People are actively building things around instead of learning the rules. I suppose that came from writing being easier than
by ecaradec 15y ago
It seems that git is the new regex. People are actively building things around instead of learning the rules. I suppose that came from writing being easier than reading.
- batista 15y agoWell, regex has a horrible syntax too. The mathematical principles underneath are good, but the standard regex syntax is arcane and values brevity over readability, modifiability, etc.
- cytzol 15y agoI don't want to venture too far off-topic, but when the Perl 6 folks re-designed regexes, they found out that they weren't really designed for anything; the syntax just grew, and common features were sometimes longer than rare ones: http://www.perl6.org/archive/doc/design/apo/A05.html http://www.perl6.org/archive/doc/design/apo/A05.html (section "Poor Huffman Coding"). I haven't studied enough of the Git plumbing to know what's going on underneath, but I suspect that the same thing is going on, where features are added without regard to other ones already present (feel free to correct me on this)
- spooneybarger 15y agoI know regular expressions way better than most people I come across and I still never feel to good about my command of the more 'esoteric' features. Having a version control system ( something that more people will use more often every day than regexes ) compared to them, is not a heartening thought.
- pjscott 15y agoUnderneath, git is actually based on a really simple tree-of-objects data structure. All those esoteric features are built on an elegant base; understand that base, and you can understand anything git does (though it may not be obvious at first).