6 ms·

All these things just remind me how depressing it is that we all use this deeply flawed tool, git, and no one can get enough critical mass for a substantially b

All these things just remind me how depressing it is that we all use this deeply flawed tool, git, and no one can get enough critical mass for a substantially better version.

whoomp12342 2y ago
humans are creatures of habit. fixing these flaws is not enough to motivate us onto something new, it has to be groundbreaking.
- g-b-r 2y ago
  It's not a matter of habit but of widespread usage If you're a developer, for almost every job or open source job you'll be required to use git, but I think most people long of moving away from it
  - jeltz 2y ago
    Not my experience at all. Most devs I have met in real life love git. It is certainly not perfect but it is good and way better than what came before. I would be happy if someone wrote a replacement which improved substantially upon git but if that never happens that would be fine too.
    - g-b-r 2y ago
      Well not my experience, but yeah let's hope that something much better replaces it soon
jFriedensreich 2y ago
you can start using sapling today. its github compatible and production ready. as long as the new tools support github or whatever forge/hub you are using, there is no need for critical mass for adoption. This is not possisble for radical approaches like pijul, but that approach is not fully proven yet.
- epage 2y ago
  Isn't sapling only compatible with git servers and not local repos? That is a huge impediment with so many tools expecting git. That is what i find impressive about jj is it is compatible with local repos.
  - jFriedensreich 2y ago
    that is true, i have a separate clone of my repos with sapling and git and use 98% of the time the sapling one with sapling and most importantly interactive smartlog (which is 1000 times better than most git tooling so would be reason alone to do this.) for the few times i need my git tools i sync the git clone via the git remote and then use the git tools on that repo.
packetlost 2y ago
the world if filled with "good enough" tools and I don't foresee that ever changing tbh. You'd have to offer something really substantially better than the status quo to gain critical mass. That being said, I think the only thing about git that doesn't make reasonable sense are the damn command line flags and subcommand names. The actual semantics of git are pretty much exactly what you want for source control.
- stevage 2y ago
  Nah, git has lots of bad design choices that are deeper than UI. The index doesn't need to exist. There is a lot of state that is not recorded anywhere - history lost forever. The rebase vs merge disaster. Etc etc.
  - pc86 2y ago
    This will sound flippant but it's an honest question: who cares? I use git all day, every day. Sometimes CLI, sometimes a dedicated UI (e.g. GH desktop but have also used Tower and other dedicated tools), sometimes a UI in something else a la VSCode. I write code every day. Why should I care at all about rebase vs. merge, whether the internals of git are optimal, whether index needs to exist at all or what it even is? I think this is sort of what the other comment is getting at about a replacement needing to be much better and that git is good enough. I can count on one hand the number times I've ever needed to glean information out of old commit messages and when something got merged into something else. Arguing about git workflows and whether you should rebase, merge, squash merge, trunk deployment, gitflow, etc. all seems like ultimate bikeshedding to me. If you're shipping code and making money your git workflow is irrelevant. If your project is so convoluted and broken and you're gaining actual useful information from a 2-year old commit message that you couldn't get just by looking at the code it feels like something else is fundamentally broken that better git internals are not going to address.
    - rob74 2y ago
      I would care if a new VCS would make my life easier. This quote from the linked article: > very few working developers have a good mental model for Git. Instead, they have a handful of commands they have learned over the years: enough to get by, and little more. ...pretty much describes me TBH. I know enough of git to get by day to day, but if I need to do more than that, I have to rely on StackOverflow et al. Which is always frustrating and feels like a waste of time.
dxdm 2y ago
> how depressing it is that we all use this deeply flawed tool, git Maybe a change in perspective can help you be less depressed. I don't find git "deeply flawed"; on the contrary, it's an extremely useful tool with an easy to grasp data model. Some parts of it are quirky, sure, but I find it very easy to use productively in code bases small and large, private or shared. It's such a huge improvement over what was used before, it can be a little weird for me to hear people complain so hard about git. But hey, some fresher perspective than mine surely exist. Anyway, instead of thinking of git as deeply flawed, try to see it as a battle tested tool without which your job would suck in ways you can't even imagine. You're standing on the shoulders of a giant, easily wielding its power, and it sounds like the wart you found on its chin is a huge catastrophe somehow. Find a way to appreciate the giant until a worthy successor inevitably emerges, and maybe things will seem a little less depressing. :)
- thfuran 2y ago
  >Anyway, instead of thinking of git as deeply flawed, try to see it as a battle tested tool without which your job would suck in ways you can't even imagine. I would rather use mercurial.
wmf 2y ago
Step one is for you personally to start using jj or sapling or gitless. Step two is to convince two other people.
- ramon156 2y ago
  And since you're early, you'll benefit the most (:
yard2010 2y ago
npm says hi, how do you like your eggs in the morning?

All these things just remind me how depressing it is that we all use this deeply flawed tool, git, and no one can get enough critical mass for a substantially better version.

whoomp12342 2y ago

humans are creatures of habit. fixing these flaws is not enough to motivate us onto something new, it has to be groundbreaking.

g-b-r 2y ago
It's not a matter of habit but of widespread usage If you're a developer, for almost every job or open source job you'll be required to use git, but I think most people long of moving away from it
- jeltz 2y ago
  Not my experience at all. Most devs I have met in real life love git. It is certainly not perfect but it is good and way better than what came before. I would be happy if someone wrote a replacement which improved substantially upon git but if that never happens that would be fine too.
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    Well not my experience, but yeah let's hope that something much better replaces it soon

jFriedensreich 2y ago

you can start using sapling today. its github compatible and production ready. as long as the new tools support github or whatever forge/hub you are using, there is no need for critical mass for adoption. This is not possisble for radical approaches like pijul, but that approach is not fully proven yet.

epage 2y ago
Isn't sapling only compatible with git servers and not local repos? That is a huge impediment with so many tools expecting git. That is what i find impressive about jj is it is compatible with local repos.
- jFriedensreich 2y ago
  that is true, i have a separate clone of my repos with sapling and git and use 98% of the time the sapling one with sapling and most importantly interactive smartlog (which is 1000 times better than most git tooling so would be reason alone to do this.) for the few times i need my git tools i sync the git clone via the git remote and then use the git tools on that repo.

packetlost 2y ago

the world if filled with "good enough" tools and I don't foresee that ever changing tbh. You'd have to offer something really substantially better than the status quo to gain critical mass. That being said, I think the only thing about git that doesn't make reasonable sense are the damn command line flags and subcommand names. The actual semantics of git are pretty much exactly what you want for source control.

stevage 2y ago
Nah, git has lots of bad design choices that are deeper than UI. The index doesn't need to exist. There is a lot of state that is not recorded anywhere - history lost forever. The rebase vs merge disaster. Etc etc.
- pc86 2y ago
  This will sound flippant but it's an honest question: who cares? I use git all day, every day. Sometimes CLI, sometimes a dedicated UI (e.g. GH desktop but have also used Tower and other dedicated tools), sometimes a UI in something else a la VSCode. I write code every day. Why should I care at all about rebase vs. merge, whether the internals of git are optimal, whether index needs to exist at all or what it even is? I think this is sort of what the other comment is getting at about a replacement needing to be much better and that git is good enough. I can count on one hand the number times I've ever needed to glean information out of old commit messages and when something got merged into something else. Arguing about git workflows and whether you should rebase, merge, squash merge, trunk deployment, gitflow, etc. all seems like ultimate bikeshedding to me. If you're shipping code and making money your git workflow is irrelevant. If your project is so convoluted and broken and you're gaining actual useful information from a 2-year old commit message that you couldn't get just by looking at the code it feels like something else is fundamentally broken that better git internals are not going to address.
  - rob74 2y ago
    I would care if a new VCS would make my life easier. This quote from the linked article: > very few working developers have a good mental model for Git. Instead, they have a handful of commands they have learned over the years: enough to get by, and little more. ...pretty much describes me TBH. I know enough of git to get by day to day, but if I need to do more than that, I have to rely on StackOverflow et al. Which is always frustrating and feels like a waste of time.

dxdm 2y ago

> how depressing it is that we all use this deeply flawed tool, git Maybe a change in perspective can help you be less depressed. I don't find git "deeply flawed"; on the contrary, it's an extremely useful tool with an easy to grasp data model. Some parts of it are quirky, sure, but I find it very easy to use productively in code bases small and large, private or shared. It's such a huge improvement over what was used before, it can be a little weird for me to hear people complain so hard about git. But hey, some fresher perspective than mine surely exist. Anyway, instead of thinking of git as deeply flawed, try to see it as a battle tested tool without which your job would suck in ways you can't even imagine. You're standing on the shoulders of a giant, easily wielding its power, and it sounds like the wart you found on its chin is a huge catastrophe somehow. Find a way to appreciate the giant until a worthy successor inevitably emerges, and maybe things will seem a little less depressing. :)

thfuran 2y ago
>Anyway, instead of thinking of git as deeply flawed, try to see it as a battle tested tool without which your job would suck in ways you can't even imagine. I would rather use mercurial.

wmf 2y ago

Step one is for you personally to start using jj or sapling or gitless. Step two is to convince two other people.

ramon156 2y ago
And since you're early, you'll benefit the most (:

yard2010 2y ago

npm says hi, how do you like your eggs in the morning?