3 ms·
> Git makes version control roughly 10x more complicated than it needs to be. A significant part of this is that git explicitly supports more workflows than ce
by CuriousCosmic 3y ago
> Git makes version control roughly 10x more complicated than it needs to be.
A significant part of this is that git explicitly supports more workflows than centralised VCS like subversion, perforce, or clearcase. Other than a few fairly small differences, mercurial and fossil (two other distributed VCS projects) have the same UX issues. You can't really reduce the complexity without just lopping off support. You can make that complexity more approachable/digestible (which the git devs are trying to do) but this fundamentally requires a certain willingness from the user to learn the tool.
For a lot of people git ends up being a sort of cargo cult where they get through the day with a set of magical incantations that make it work and solve their problems but without any real ability to troubleshoot when they do something wrong. Which is exactly the thing that prevents them from "gitting it".
And worth noting: I don't think I've ever worked with someone who has really gotten irreparably stuck with git after reading through the important parts of the user manual (not the references/man pages but the dedicated user manual [1]) and/or the git book [2]. There are some overly technical parts but they are towards the end of each. But if someone actually reads the entry-level user oriented parts of each/either document, odds are they'll understand enough to be able to actually solve their problems.
1. https://git-scm.com/docs/user-manual https://git-scm.com/docs/user-manual
2. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2 https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2
- forrestthewoods 3y ago> A significant part of this is that git explicitly supports more workflows than centralised VCS like subversion, perforce, or clearcase. I don't think this is quite correct. Mercurial is just as capable but has a much more accessible CLI. Git pushes edge-cases to front and center. Almost all Git users use Git as a defacto centralized tool. There's a remote on GitHub, the end. Almost all users never need any feature that has to do with decentralization. Git has somehow tricked people into thinking that version control is complicated. It's tragic.