Hacker News Reader

Comment by Slackwise | Hacker News Reader

That's more a case of UI rather than implementation, yeah?

What's stopping us from just using those words to describe operations with Git?

I mean, what Git is, is a data structure with a set of operations on it, and the design of that is pretty fundamental at this point. We'd need to see something more novel[1].

(Sidenote: Git almost seemed an obvious trajectory for version control given how problematic file-based approaches have been. I've used far too many version control systems, including "ancient" awful ones like Harvest[2], and it just felt inevitable that we'd one day rely on an "always-branching" model.)

[1]: I did think of something more novel: semantic version control (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25537455)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CA_Harvest_Software_Change_Man...

View on HN

UX matters. Databases aren’t just data structures and their operations. They do compete based on interaction patterns and metaphors. VC can do the same.

Why don't you create your own wrapper that replaces names you don't like with pretty names you like? You can as well promote it, get lots of stars on GitHub and ultimately create official Git wrapper for your kind of people. It doesn't seem too difficult. I think it could be a single shell file.

I don't know a single database that is identical to another in implementation and just has a different UI/UX for it. Every single database has something specific for it in terms of implementation.

(Unless I guess we're talking forks of MySQL.)

I don't know if maybe you have a good example...?

Git changed its implementation with time too.

Not really. Under the covers, it has always been an object database where the objects key is the hash of that object, and other than blob, tree, commit and signed tag they haven’t really changed since then.

The protocol has become a bit smarter, by allowing there to be additional options passed for different communications options, and there is a slow but steady progress of moving from sha1 to sha256 for the hash function, but that isn’t rolled out yet completely.

Different tools have been added over time but the internals are pretty much the same as they’ve always been.

>>UX matters.

Of that was the case then how come Git reigns supreme in spite of the lack of a polished UI/UX?

Git won because it was created by Linus and Linux moved to it, and that brought it a huge amount of publicity. Then GitHub came along and cemented its place.

It isn't the only thing that matters.

> What's stopping us from just using those words to describe operations with Git?

The huge existing body of documentation, tutorials, StackOverflow questions, etc. that use the confusing standard Git terminology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com