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Comment by eesmith | Hacker News Reader

While I find Mercurial to be equally capable and easier to use.

Mercurial is actually more capable (see "phases" and "changeset evolution"). From the standpoint of the end user, that is.

The sad part about Mercurial is that it is losing the battle against git because it was the better tool at the outset.

The well-documented shittyness of the git user experience was the key to its success because it forced the creation of shiny wrappers and integrations to hide the abomination within. And this combination of gloss and peer pressure now manages to convince people that git is "good".

Worse is better indeed...

Personally (as a member of the Mercurial crew at the time) I believe GitHub has been a key part of Git winning. It provided a great UX for sharing code that Bitbucket despite valiant efforts of Jesper et al could just not match.

I do think the time is just about right for someone to start a new generation that has compatibility with Git but provides a better user experience. Also in this category, see the Breezy effort that some old-time Bazaar hackers have started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vtToynsNSs

Considering how the hype cycle proceeds, any switch to a git successor will probably be slow. I would expect a replacement that comes into existence now to need five years to make itself known in the market and another five years to gather a critical mass. The actual tipping point would probably be reached around 15 to 20 years from now. That is an awfully long time.

I cite my firm belief that Mercurial would win the DVCS wars as a key data point illustrating my abysmal ability to predict tech winners.

Betamax is the better video cassette format.

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