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Comment by bengotow | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this is a dealbreaker for 99% of people. I currently use Tower (https://www.git-tower.com/), a closed-source Mac Git client that costs $70.

It's beautiful, it speeds up my work day to day, and it's been worth every cent. Open source is great and I spend my days building an open-source mail client, but I have no problem paying for great tools.

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As a long time git command line user, I've played with different GUI clients, but I don't see where it would speed me up (and in fact, they seem to just slow me down). What about it helps you in your day to day coding? Do you interact with git exclusively through a GUI, or do you use some mix of command line and GUI?

Almost exclusively a command-line user too. The one GUI tool I sometimes use is tig -- I like its status view for staging parts of files at a time if I made too many changes at once.

i use a gui for two things:

1. interactive staging and committing of only part of a local change. git-cola is way better than the command line flow for this

2. gitk's tree viewing and filtering options are nice. i usually end up just using tig for speed of opening, but if there's a large set of changes i want to navigate through i launch gitk. also it's the easiest way i've found to branch at a particular commit.

I magit in emacs, combined with git gutter. It's a good way to see your commits as you edit code.

But lots is still done on the command line. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

GUIs are gmore discoverable than the command line so they are great when you need to do something that you don't do very often.

I used to be a cli proponent and it worked very well for moderately sized, hardly dynamic repos; for other repos that can see dozens of commits an hour it's much easier to use a GUI. I use it for easier rebasing and cherry-picking, because I can directly see what I'm taking and where I'm putting it, instead of having to first check the log, then copy the hash, then paste it with the right git incantation.

Sometimes using the mouse really is more powerful; sometimes it is not. It is important to see that it can sometimes be your friend.

> do you use some mix of command line and GUI?

This, for me. I do most git things through the command line, but I find Tower's GUI very convenient for reviewing my changed files before I commit them.

At that point, I'm basically looking at superficial issues. That's usually the step where I realize I've left some debugging statements in my code, or have some formatting issues that ought to be cleaned up.

I hate to be that guy, but you're paying $70 for that? What does that offer over, say SourceTree, Atlassian's free offering. From a quick glance, they look pretty similar to me.

> What does that offer over, say SourceTree, Atlassian's free offering.

An intuitive interface and a simpler layout. I like Tower better for the same reason I like to use a trackpad over a mouse. Day to day, the difference is obvious and positively impacts my performance.

They are very similar. Tower has less of git's features as well when compared to SourceTree. It is though much much faster and definitely more stable.

Much like GitKraken, the site is completely unhelpful and doesn't have any screenshots. Why would I download, much less pay for, a piece of software which I haven't even seen?

There's a link to the screenshots at the bottom of the page.

http://www.gitkraken.com/screenshots

What are you even talking about? Both sites have screenshots of their product...

SourceTree's latest update makes you login to an Atlassian account just to be able to use the app. That has been a deal-breaker for an otherwise great app.

Am I the only one who remembers when $70 was cheap for anything development related? Either it's good enough to save you 5-10 minutes a day where it's obviously worth $70 or it's not, and isn't worth any price (well maybe a dollar or two if you are, say, a collector of git clients).

Somehow new generations of developers want all their tools for free, but expect to get money for their work.

Strange profession, when compared how much some of other professionals pay for their tools.

Exactly. I have a Bosch drill and I recently had a carpenter trying to convince me that I should have spent three times as much on a Makita. He was basically trying to show me that the cheaper drill was a false economy. Its hilarious in software how much time we waste dealing with poor tools. Some free tools are excellent but in many cases spending some money will save you so much time and effort, enabling you to make more money and giving some of that to the developers. Wins all round.

Why is it strange? Lots developers who write free software get paid for their work.

Only in areas where software is not the main product.

How did you come up with that?

Mozilla is a clear example of people paid to write FLOSS. I used to work at a foundation that did that too. There's plenty going around.

Mozilla is a clear example of a software that isn't the product being sold.

The product being sold is the service to access online web sites, sell search data to engines and online advertising.

> Am I the only one who remembers when $70 was cheap for anything development related?

That's more than what I've spend of software (excluding videogames) in the last decade, probably more. It's also more than a weekly rent for me too.

Yeah, if it saves me time/work I'll gladly pay $70.

The problem isn't the cost in money, it's the cost in time and inconvenience. It sort of manifests in two ways. First, I build my professional workflow around a tool that can simply cease to exist in a few days/weeks/months/years...it puts me at the mercy of the maker of the tool, often needlessly. Second, software that costs money tends to be closed source, which is at odds with community efforts that can improve and shape the software over time, as well as maintain it should the original developer move on. So those issues are the problem, not the $70.

I disagree as all of those problems exist with SourceTree as well, which is what the parent was comparing it to.

Agreed.

Is this an argument against my point? I'm not unwilling to pay for a tool -- I've even paid for Sublime which is free unless you choose to pay. Is there a reason I should feel compelled to pay for a tool, given a comparable free alternative?

SourceTree is a god awful nightmare of a UI and I have found myself having to triple check all the checkboxes present before I do anything lest I manage to hose it up. I would use absolutely no GUI if my option was that or SourceTree. I also hear the latest update has been a real punch to the gut for people as well.

I branch and merge in moments at least a half dozen times a day in Tower. Getting to diffs, creating patches, and viewing changesets are easy and pleasant to look at. It has built I support for a Gitflow workflow so naming conventions and everything allow for one or two clicks to go from no feature branch to a new one.

Frankly, it's just pleasant to use, doesn't screw up my source, and makes it easy to get my code committed and pushed.

> It has built I support for a Gitflow workflow

So does SourceTree. Have you tried using it? If so, what issues have you found with it? Personally, I don't use it, so I can't speak to its functionality.

> I branch and merge in moments at least a half dozen times a day in Tower.

I do the same in SourceTree, and find it trivial, but perhaps it's just a usage difference. If you want to use Tower go for it -- I have no affiliation with Atlassian to push the product on you, I just enjoy it. I'm just surprised at how much Tower costs.

It's funny because I generally regard Atlassian products as at the worst, not bad. That is to say, I don't feel like anything they do sucks, some things I really like, some things I'm meh about. Except SourceTree. Maybe because I'd been using Tower for nearly a year by the time I came across SourceTree. Maybe because it's such a Windows feeling application. I don't know. I'm sure most of my dislike is illogical at this point, but it still is there.

I don't feel like $70 is very much for something that feeds my family. I use it all day every day and the work I do with it allows my wife to stay home with my kids. If people didn't pay me to build the software that _I_ build, this wouldn't be possible. It's the same reason I choose IntelliJ over Eclipse or other IDEs. If the price difference is justified by my effctiveness with your tool, I'm spending the money without hesitation.

The only caveat I have is, even if your product is the best, if your company is shifty or a bad actor- I'll do whatever I can to avoid it.

SourceTree has hosed numerous co-workers repositories because they clicked the wrong option. I'm not a fan in the slightest.

Really? Both you and another commenter said as much, but I've never seen this problem, or known anyone who experienced that across probably a dozen people I've worked with over the span of three (?) years. I'm actually not even sure what options you could use that would cause that. Do you have examples?

"I refuse to be bound by software I cannot negotiate with".

You're more than welcome to donate to Free software projects developing those tools and ask for a feature.

Wow, that's ridiculously expensive! Especially considering the OFFICIAL client is free software.

I also think you exagerate with it not being a deal breaker. I don't know any software developer IRL that uses proprietary git clients, or other developer-specific tools which are proprietary. Maybe most people don't care about FLOSS/propietary, but devs tend to care a lot more.

what's the official client?

I think he means the CLI.

I'm in an office surrounded by people using Visual studio on windows, running Perforce. We do have some git infrastructure, and anyone that interacts with that uses sourcetree. I know that the diff tools of choice are Araxis Merge/P4Merge/Beyond Compare. There's also people using VisualAssist on top of Visual Studio.

There's plenty of developers who don't mind using proprietary tools

How is rebasing? Can you merge/split/reorder commits easily?

Nope. Tower lacks that feature.

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