4 ms·

jj is great and while it was an adjustment at first, I've never looked back. I feel like when you're working with other people, things never get reviewed and m

jj is great and while it was an adjustment at first, I've never looked back. I feel like when you're working with other people, things never get reviewed and merged as quickly as you'd like. With jj, it's pretty low-cost to have a bunch of PRs open at once, and you can do something like `jj new <pr1> <pr2> <pr3>` to build stuff that requires all 3. This lets me do things like... not do a big refactoring in the same PR as adding a feature. I can have them both self-contained, but still start on the next step before they're all merged. It's easy to add changes on top, switching between the individual PRs as comments come up, etc. I always liked doing things like this. At Google where we used a custom fork of Perforce, I told myself "NEVER DO STACKED CLs HAVE YOU NOT LEARNED YOUR LESSON YET?" If one CL depended on another... don't do it. With git... I told myself the same thing, as I sat in endless interactive rebases and merge conflict commits ("git rebase abort" might have been my most-used command). With jj, it's not a problem. There are merge conflicts. You can resolve them with the peace of mind as a separate commit to track your resolution. `jj new -d 'resolve merge conflict` -A @` to add a new commit after the conflicted one. Hack on your resolution until you're happy. jj squash --into @-. Merge conflict resolved. It is truly a beautiful model. Really a big mental health saver. It just makes it so easy to work with other people.

andrewdea 6mo ago
I'm having trouble understanding the value of this and most other supposed advantages of jj I'm seeing. I'm trying to pinpoint if it's because 1) my workflow doesn't need jj's fancy stuff, 2) I've gotten so used to `git`'s "flaws" that I don't notice them, or 3) the git porcelain I use (magit) does a good enough job at managing the flaws. If you need to build on something that requires changes from 3 open PRs, can't you just start a new branch from main, merge all 3 PRs into it, and get to work? As changes are applied to the open PRs, you can rebase. Obviously that might cause some merge conflicts here and there, but as long as the PRs aren't super overlapping, they should still be manageable. If there's a ton of overlap between 3 open PRs, that to me sounds like a problem in the workflow/plan, which must be dealt with regardless of the VCS or porcelain.
- steveklabnik 6mo ago
  For me, it wasn't so much that jj enabled things I couldn't do before, though there are some things. What it enabled was me doing the things I was doing, but in a more easy way. This also leads you to do things that you can do, but sometimes avoid because it's a lot of work.
  - andrewdea 6mo ago
    I guess that makes sense but also reinforces the confusion I have on whether jj is just another git "porcelain" (aka UI), or a replacement for git altogether. If it aims to mainly improve the UX (do the same things you were doing before but easier), then it's irrelevant to those of us who have been lucky to find and learn sensible UXs. If it aims to be a git replacement, I'm a little curious why the developers would decide to re-implement something from scratch only to end up with an "alternative" that is mostly compatible and doesn't radically change the internal model or add new features. I last used GitHub Desktop years ago and had a terrible time. The git CLI is powerful but not very intuitive. It really wasn't until I learned magit that things "clicked" for me. I know that many git UXs are pretty bad. But the way git works internally seems pretty great to me. Too often, criticism of git conflates the two.
    - naasking 6mo ago
      > then it's irrelevant to those of us who have been lucky to find and learn sensible UXs Only if you're a solo dev that doesn't work on a team or have to mentor new devs that haven't developed good intuitions for this. This strikes me a lot like the C vs. safer programming language debate all over again.
      - andrewdea 6mo ago
        When I mentor new devs, I explain to them how I use git. Sometimes I show them the workflow in magit, which makes it easier to visualize things. But mostly I just show them how their intended actions map onto the relevant CLI commands and I tell them to figure out how those map onto their porcelain of choice. I've developed this intuition thanks to magit, but I don't think magit is necessary. This approach seems preferable to me than onboarding new devs onto a new tool that is not the industry standard. > This strikes me a lot like the C vs. safer programming language debate all over again. I don't see how. Safer programming language address a clear problem in C, with trade-offs (sometimes arguably the trade-offs may not be worth it, and in my experience that's what the debate tends to be about). If jj is a replacement for git it should be clear what problem within git it aims at addressing. If the problem is in the UX, then to me and many others it's not worth the trouble.

andrewdea 6mo ago

I'm having trouble understanding the value of this and most other supposed advantages of jj I'm seeing. I'm trying to pinpoint if it's because 1) my workflow doesn't need jj's fancy stuff, 2) I've gotten so used to `git`'s "flaws" that I don't notice them, or 3) the git porcelain I use (magit) does a good enough job at managing the flaws. If you need to build on something that requires changes from 3 open PRs, can't you just start a new branch from main, merge all 3 PRs into it, and get to work? As changes are applied to the open PRs, you can rebase. Obviously that might cause some merge conflicts here and there, but as long as the PRs aren't super overlapping, they should still be manageable. If there's a ton of overlap between 3 open PRs, that to me sounds like a problem in the workflow/plan, which must be dealt with regardless of the VCS or porcelain.

steveklabnik 6mo ago
For me, it wasn't so much that jj enabled things I couldn't do before, though there are some things. What it enabled was me doing the things I was doing, but in a more easy way. This also leads you to do things that you can do, but sometimes avoid because it's a lot of work.
- andrewdea 6mo ago
  I guess that makes sense but also reinforces the confusion I have on whether jj is just another git "porcelain" (aka UI), or a replacement for git altogether. If it aims to mainly improve the UX (do the same things you were doing before but easier), then it's irrelevant to those of us who have been lucky to find and learn sensible UXs. If it aims to be a git replacement, I'm a little curious why the developers would decide to re-implement something from scratch only to end up with an "alternative" that is mostly compatible and doesn't radically change the internal model or add new features. I last used GitHub Desktop years ago and had a terrible time. The git CLI is powerful but not very intuitive. It really wasn't until I learned magit that things "clicked" for me. I know that many git UXs are pretty bad. But the way git works internally seems pretty great to me. Too often, criticism of git conflates the two.
  - naasking 6mo ago
    > then it's irrelevant to those of us who have been lucky to find and learn sensible UXs Only if you're a solo dev that doesn't work on a team or have to mentor new devs that haven't developed good intuitions for this. This strikes me a lot like the C vs. safer programming language debate all over again.
    - andrewdea 6mo ago
      When I mentor new devs, I explain to them how I use git. Sometimes I show them the workflow in magit, which makes it easier to visualize things. But mostly I just show them how their intended actions map onto the relevant CLI commands and I tell them to figure out how those map onto their porcelain of choice. I've developed this intuition thanks to magit, but I don't think magit is necessary. This approach seems preferable to me than onboarding new devs onto a new tool that is not the industry standard. > This strikes me a lot like the C vs. safer programming language debate all over again. I don't see how. Safer programming language address a clear problem in C, with trade-offs (sometimes arguably the trade-offs may not be worth it, and in my experience that's what the debate tends to be about). If jj is a replacement for git it should be clear what problem within git it aims at addressing. If the problem is in the UX, then to me and many others it's not worth the trouble.