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> peanut gallery of git experts There are people who use git for its original purpose (kernel devs and very few others) and then there is the remaining 99% of

> peanut gallery of git experts There are people who use git for its original purpose (kernel devs and very few others) and then there is the remaining 99% of people who essentially use “github flavored git”, using only three or four git subcommands and for the most part never needing to understand its intricacies. Unfortunately, although they are using git-the-chainsaw-shotgun with all the safeties on, it’s nonetheless a chainsaw shotgun and sometimes they’ll run into issues where they or somebody in their company needs to be an expert and figure out how to un-scramble an egg, so to speak. If a new VCS can solve the 99% case and never need users to fall back to understanding nitty gritty details, it could very well have strong takeup especially among people who don’t give a crap about what VCS they’re using as long as it gets out of the way and doesn’t make them think (game devs, data folks, etc).

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oblio 3y ago
I see 2 huge barriers for a new commercial VCS: 1. Devs don't like to pay for core tools. And VCSes need network effects. 2. VCSes seem to be really hard.
- gavinhoward 3y ago
  As someone who is making one (not Diversion), I agree with both of your points. Do you think that a VCS that solves the large file problem and binary file problem could succeed?
- sasham 3y ago
  Totally agree, it won't be easy. Companies do pay for GitHub/GitLab/Perforce though, and for indie devs there's the free tier. I think what made git really take off is actually GitHub's free tier/OS hosting, and not git itself being free (at least for parts of the market, and I might be wrong). 100% correct about VCS development, it's much harder than one can expect.
  - danudey 3y ago
    > Companies do pay for GitHub/GitLab/Perforce though Those products also provide a huge amount of other value and functionality (though at a high price). As someone who worked at a (mobile) game dev studio, this "what if Dropbox but Git?" product design really hits for me. Teaching our artists to use Google Drive or Team Drives was easy, but the functionality isn't there. Teaching them to use SVN was a nightmare (because SVN workflows are a nightmare) but the functionality is... also not really there? Give me either a local installation that I can set up in my office or a local proxy to reduce download speeds (or peer-to-peer on local network, the way Dropbox does it) and I could see this being beneficial for a lot of especially smaller studios.
ffgjgf1 3y ago
> If a new VCS can solve the 99% case and never need users to fall back to understanding nitty gritty details Mercurial was a bit like that? Yet it didn’t stand a chance against git regardless

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oblio 3y ago

I see 2 huge barriers for a new commercial VCS: 1. Devs don't like to pay for core tools. And VCSes need network effects. 2. VCSes seem to be really hard.

gavinhoward 3y ago
As someone who is making one (not Diversion), I agree with both of your points. Do you think that a VCS that solves the large file problem and binary file problem could succeed?
sasham 3y ago
Totally agree, it won't be easy. Companies do pay for GitHub/GitLab/Perforce though, and for indie devs there's the free tier. I think what made git really take off is actually GitHub's free tier/OS hosting, and not git itself being free (at least for parts of the market, and I might be wrong). 100% correct about VCS development, it's much harder than one can expect.
- danudey 3y ago
  > Companies do pay for GitHub/GitLab/Perforce though Those products also provide a huge amount of other value and functionality (though at a high price). As someone who worked at a (mobile) game dev studio, this "what if Dropbox but Git?" product design really hits for me. Teaching our artists to use Google Drive or Team Drives was easy, but the functionality isn't there. Teaching them to use SVN was a nightmare (because SVN workflows are a nightmare) but the functionality is... also not really there? Give me either a local installation that I can set up in my office or a local proxy to reduce download speeds (or peer-to-peer on local network, the way Dropbox does it) and I could see this being beneficial for a lot of especially smaller studios.

ffgjgf1 3y ago

> If a new VCS can solve the 99% case and never need users to fall back to understanding nitty gritty details Mercurial was a bit like that? Yet it didn’t stand a chance against git regardless