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Comment by jerzyt | Hacker News Reader

I couldn't agree more. The fundamental design it's absolutely brilliant. The UI does take some getting used to.

I frequently use Git as an interview question, but only when the candidate lists Git among the skill set. Specifically, I ask how does Git figure out when you've renamed a file. If you don't grok it, don't list it.

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Almost everyone would agree that listing 'git' as a skill implies knowing the operation of using git, not the specifics of how it works under the hood...

Why ask such a gotcha question?

I would say that listing anything as a skill implies knowing of how it works under the hood, until stated otherwise. It’s a resume, not a list of random TIL facts.

I don't think there's anything 'gotcha' about the question. If you understand that git uses SHA1 for the objects it stores, the answer is pretty obvious. If you don't, you really don't know git.

> how does Git figure out when you've renamed a file. If you don't grok it, don't list it.

How does git figure it out?

Percent similarity on display, not on commit.

That second part is actually important from the user's perspective, not as details on the internals: every single new hire we've gotten who is still learning version control expects svn to detect automatically, and has to be told about "svn mv".

The ui doesn’t take any getting used to if you don’t use it ;)

That is so true. A lot of people use git as write only repository. Still better than nothing, or copying directories. Maybe at some point they'll figure out how to retrieve a previous version.

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