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The inner workings of git are not overly complicated. The real problem is git only provides a thin layer on top of the inner workings. It’s not git that needs r

The inner workings of git are not overly complicated. The real problem is git only provides a thin layer on top of the inner workings. It’s not git that needs replacing, (it’s just saving blobs of data) it’s the user interface on top that is confusing. The problem with simplifying the user interface is that abstracting away the complexity is super difficult.

Aachen 3y ago
Git feels a lot like pgp to me: somehow we're not managing to make things simple enough for use by the general public, even when you only need a few buttons and input fields. There's differences, such as that pgp is more complicated under the hood and it being a cryptographic system that needs to be foolproof whereas in git you can nuke and re-clone without data loss most of the time, let alone confidentiality/integrity loss. It just feels very similar in that only expert users properly use it and most people who could make use of it don't bother learning because the interfaces available are such a struggle (beyond basic operations anyway) Whether it can all be solved with a simpler user interface, or whether it would require a simpler underlying system to be able to make simpler standard operations, is where I'm not sure
dmos62 3y ago
Not overly complicated, but super difficult to abstract is somewhat of a contradiction. Maybe the inner workings are complicated, but not complicated to implement right once you understand them.
nrclark 3y ago
Git does have one big architectural problem IMO - native unit of storage is a blob, not a diff. Things like rebase, cherry-pick, 3-way merge, etc would be much easier in a world where the storage model was “diffs” instead of “blobs”. This would have resulted in simpler CLI tools with fewer pitfalls.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  I wonder how many horrendously named and located files exist in repositories because people don’t want to fuck with the history.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  The two are interchangeable; a computer can make one from the other. Storing deltas makes common operations slower, as getting file contents requires replaying all the deltas through history.

Aachen 3y ago

Git feels a lot like pgp to me: somehow we're not managing to make things simple enough for use by the general public, even when you only need a few buttons and input fields. There's differences, such as that pgp is more complicated under the hood and it being a cryptographic system that needs to be foolproof whereas in git you can nuke and re-clone without data loss most of the time, let alone confidentiality/integrity loss. It just feels very similar in that only expert users properly use it and most people who could make use of it don't bother learning because the interfaces available are such a struggle (beyond basic operations anyway) Whether it can all be solved with a simpler user interface, or whether it would require a simpler underlying system to be able to make simpler standard operations, is where I'm not sure

dmos62 3y ago

Not overly complicated, but super difficult to abstract is somewhat of a contradiction. Maybe the inner workings are complicated, but not complicated to implement right once you understand them.

nrclark 3y ago

Git does have one big architectural problem IMO - native unit of storage is a blob, not a diff. Things like rebase, cherry-pick, 3-way merge, etc would be much easier in a world where the storage model was “diffs” instead of “blobs”. This would have resulted in simpler CLI tools with fewer pitfalls.

quickthrower2 3y ago
I wonder how many horrendously named and located files exist in repositories because people don’t want to fuck with the history.
yencabulator 3y ago
The two are interchangeable; a computer can make one from the other. Storing deltas makes common operations slower, as getting file contents requires replaying all the deltas through history.