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Comment by jozeph78 | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for this good article. I took a 15 minute tour of both HG and Git and felt that hg was overall a better experience, but felt if the community is moving towards Git there has to be some good reason. I'm always a fan of the underdog, so I've been asking everyone why Git (besides Github of course).

This is the first article that gives real pitfalls of one vs the other. I enjoyed the read and would love to hear more as well as counter arguments.

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... but felt if the community is moving towards Git there has to be some good reason...

Must there? What if most people are switching based on the same vague feeling that there must be some reason behind the shape of the swarm?

(I'm a fan of both systems here, fwiw.)

Hg is going to usually be something you pick up slightly faster. It is between much and very on the intuitive scale. On the same note, once you get to competency (between 2 weeks and 4 months of use, depending on the person), git is more easy to manipulate and do the sort of things you often have to do when working with people on a project.

While somewhat unintuitive in some of the commands or the default arguments you may need, git is perfectly decipherable and memorable once you do get through the initial period.

Additionally, as git is often handled on the command line (even by people who'd usually use GUI programs), it LOOKS more intimidating, but it seems a few weeks in, people are getting by with Hg (As they don't have to get what's going on) however can do pretty complicated stuff in git (as you have to get what's happening or you will be lost).

although a bit biased, http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/ gives you the highlights of what git is good at.. for me its the simple branching coupled with easy stashing

Being biased is OK, but that site is just flat out wrong on some of its points. Mercurial has cheap local branching. There are good hosting services for hosting Mercurial repositories.

What makes you think Git is the underdog?

I think he's implying that Mercurial is the underdog

Yeah, that's the way I read it also.

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