Hacker News Reader

You had me until the part with the log. You didn't show the log, you simply explained how the jj log is confusing and not intuitive at first, and then there was a dive into some functional topics and an explanation of syntax (all while we haven't seen the log) and some more shitting on git.

By the time I got to the changes section I was a bit too tired to keep reading.

View on HN

This is a fair criticism. I struggled with how to organize that section and I might go back and add an example of what I meant, or even pull that phrase out (it’s actually from a much earlier version of the piece when it was more experience report and less introduction to the tool). I also debated about showing various bits of log output for exactly this reason, but decided not to since there are multiple examples of it in the asciinema recordings. Also, “a bit too tired to keep reading” is indicative of the other reason: this is already a mammoth piece of writing to work through! There is room to deep dive on any of the pieces as their own standalone pieces, too, but at some point I just had to publish the dang thing.

Something that would have been really helpful to me: If the big pitch is "how easy it is" and "the mental model", get to that part sooner! Put up some pictures of what I'm supposed to visualize when I'm dealing with merge conflicts, and the simple commands mapping easily to that mental model.

I also read a ton of paragraphs excited about an easier Git, but I just couldn't understand what you were talking about and how it make my life easier. What does it mean to make merge conflicts first class?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com