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Is this fear common amongst developers? My startup http://gitpilot.com http://gitpilot.com is trying to make collaboration amongst developers using Git stupidly

by jonpaul 14y ago

Is this fear common amongst developers? My startup http://gitpilot.com http://gitpilot.com is trying to make collaboration amongst developers using Git stupidly simple. A by-product of doing this is a simplified Git process. However, maybe our approach is off. Any opinions on the matter?

rogerbinns 14y ago
It looks like just another github equivalent, and I spied a Mac dock so is it Mac specific too? In any event what I have found missing is a goal oriented interface. To many of the guis and the git cli are all about tasks. If you know what tasks map to your goals then it works out ok, but if not (as is the case for perpetual intermediates) then it is a confusing maze of bizarre commands, useless messages and copy/paste from google search results hoping one of them will work. For context see this http://www.drdobbs.com/goal-directed-software-design/184409952?pgno=8 http://www.drdobbs.com/goal-directed-software-design/1844099... Git also has all of its defaults setup for large groups. For example tags are not pushed unless you specify an additional flag. That is absolutely the right thing to do when there are lots of developers, but the "wrong" thing when there are only two. Nirvana for me would be a gui tool (Linux and Mac) that interoperates with projects hosted at Github and has a goal oriented interface. It should be smart about things (eg tags not being pushed in a project of two people is worthy of attention), and it should enable a git workflow (eg topic branch, pull requests, reviews etc). I really don't care what the git commands are to do various things - there are often several needed in some particular order with various random flags. Just help me and other perpetual intermediates reach our goals and concentrate on our development efforts, not micromanaging a version control system. Part of that also means having an attitude about the right way/best practise way of doing something. Rather than providing endless configurable ways (and dialog boxes) to do something, pick one right way even if not everyone would agree. An example would be to always push tags for projects with few developers.
- jonpaul 14y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to provide some feedback. The article that you presented was really interesting and despite being over 15 years old, it seems that its insights are still valid today. Regarding Gitpilot, I think that our biggest problem at the moment is that maybe we are miscommunicating its value proposition. As it's a compliment to Github and not a replacement. I think you'd also find that it's at least attempting to be goal oriented as opposed to being task oriented like most Git GUIs. For the sake of brevity, Gitpilot is best described as a git-flow GUI [http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/, https://github.com/nvie/gitflow/ https://github.com/nvie/gitflow/]. (Our branching model is a bit different though) It is Mac specific at the moment and it's currently awaiting review for the Mac App store. If you're interested, when it's live, I'll send you and your team promo codes so that you can try it out at no cost. If so, send me an email to jp [AT] gitpilot.com Thanks again.
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    Alan Cooper (article author) also has a company and wrote several books (About Face, Inmates etc). And is considered the father of Visual Basic! But yeah, goals are timeless. I wish software/website authors realised that the goal of most users is to use their software and site for as little time as possible because they manage to achieve their goals quickly. Dialog boxes and similar stuff annoy the crap out of me. The programmer of the app/site has deep comprehensive information and they can't make their mind up, then why dump it on the user? You can trivially mitigate most things. For example if you provide undo across sessions then you don't need to ask users if they really meant to delete. Firefox on Android does a great thing - any closed tabs are shown at the bottom for a short period of time somewhat faded. Touch it to bring it back to life. We have 4 git users on the team. The one writing the most code (me) is Linux only. The next person (about half time git) is almost entirely Mac. Another two use git but have no idea what it does and do not care (both Mac). They merely run the tools we store in git. Additionally our stuff is scattered across several repositories (for good reason). To do work you need one more of them. The Github for Mac client only lets you sync one repository at a time which is painful. I wrote a script in the end that syncs all repositories. I would love to have a goal oriented gui for a git flow since I'm very lax at the moment, not having time to learn how to micromanage the sequence of commands needed. Heck I still have to look up the flags to git stash everything time I use it. But being Mac only means your software is of no value to us. Thanks for the offer though.
wilmoore 14y ago
Looks interesting; however, the signup form doesn't validate if there is trailing white-space in the email input box.

by jonpaul 14y ago

rogerbinns 14y ago

It looks like just another github equivalent, and I spied a Mac dock so is it Mac specific too? In any event what I have found missing is a goal oriented interface. To many of the guis and the git cli are all about tasks. If you know what tasks map to your goals then it works out ok, but if not (as is the case for perpetual intermediates) then it is a confusing maze of bizarre commands, useless messages and copy/paste from google search results hoping one of them will work. For context see this http://www.drdobbs.com/goal-directed-software-design/184409952?pgno=8 http://www.drdobbs.com/goal-directed-software-design/1844099... Git also has all of its defaults setup for large groups. For example tags are not pushed unless you specify an additional flag. That is absolutely the right thing to do when there are lots of developers, but the "wrong" thing when there are only two. Nirvana for me would be a gui tool (Linux and Mac) that interoperates with projects hosted at Github and has a goal oriented interface. It should be smart about things (eg tags not being pushed in a project of two people is worthy of attention), and it should enable a git workflow (eg topic branch, pull requests, reviews etc). I really don't care what the git commands are to do various things - there are often several needed in some particular order with various random flags. Just help me and other perpetual intermediates reach our goals and concentrate on our development efforts, not micromanaging a version control system. Part of that also means having an attitude about the right way/best practise way of doing something. Rather than providing endless configurable ways (and dialog boxes) to do something, pick one right way even if not everyone would agree. An example would be to always push tags for projects with few developers.

jonpaul 14y ago
Thanks for taking the time to provide some feedback. The article that you presented was really interesting and despite being over 15 years old, it seems that its insights are still valid today. Regarding Gitpilot, I think that our biggest problem at the moment is that maybe we are miscommunicating its value proposition. As it's a compliment to Github and not a replacement. I think you'd also find that it's at least attempting to be goal oriented as opposed to being task oriented like most Git GUIs. For the sake of brevity, Gitpilot is best described as a git-flow GUI [http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/, https://github.com/nvie/gitflow/ https://github.com/nvie/gitflow/]. (Our branching model is a bit different though) It is Mac specific at the moment and it's currently awaiting review for the Mac App store. If you're interested, when it's live, I'll send you and your team promo codes so that you can try it out at no cost. If so, send me an email to jp [AT] gitpilot.com Thanks again.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  Alan Cooper (article author) also has a company and wrote several books (About Face, Inmates etc). And is considered the father of Visual Basic! But yeah, goals are timeless. I wish software/website authors realised that the goal of most users is to use their software and site for as little time as possible because they manage to achieve their goals quickly. Dialog boxes and similar stuff annoy the crap out of me. The programmer of the app/site has deep comprehensive information and they can't make their mind up, then why dump it on the user? You can trivially mitigate most things. For example if you provide undo across sessions then you don't need to ask users if they really meant to delete. Firefox on Android does a great thing - any closed tabs are shown at the bottom for a short period of time somewhat faded. Touch it to bring it back to life. We have 4 git users on the team. The one writing the most code (me) is Linux only. The next person (about half time git) is almost entirely Mac. Another two use git but have no idea what it does and do not care (both Mac). They merely run the tools we store in git. Additionally our stuff is scattered across several repositories (for good reason). To do work you need one more of them. The Github for Mac client only lets you sync one repository at a time which is painful. I wrote a script in the end that syncs all repositories. I would love to have a goal oriented gui for a git flow since I'm very lax at the moment, not having time to learn how to micromanage the sequence of commands needed. Heck I still have to look up the flags to git stash everything time I use it. But being Mac only means your software is of no value to us. Thanks for the offer though.

wilmoore 14y ago

Looks interesting; however, the signup form doesn't validate if there is trailing white-space in the email input box.