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Comment by uvesten | Hacker News Reader

I’d contend that we might have another 15 years to go before the general developer population have gotten so used to git that they are actually using it in an optimal way for their purpose.

Then we’ll find out what its real pain points are, and start working on something new to solve those.

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What features should we be using in git that typical developers don't use?

I would guess some kind of answer involving complex branching schemes and/or "octopus merges", but I consider myself a fairly advanced git user and find those too hard to understand. I always stick to simple linear histories with occasional stable branches.

Git blame and git log per-file.

The commit messages could be the ultimate historical record of all the decisions and the "why"s.

Yet, on most projects, saying "I went to read the git log and found out the reason of x" instantly elevates you to a superhero status.

I guess we mix in different circles because all the developers here use git annotate and git log file|dir regularly. github even has buttons for both operations so you don't need to use the command line.

I would say that this command is much more useful than git blame:

  git log -p --follow <file>

IMO, rebase. I get so depressed everytime I see a merge commit, not to mention when a bisect ends up pointing to one. But it's very difficult to convince some developers it's a smoother workflow.

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