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Comment by irishcoffee | Hacker News Reader

The part where git needs to be “understood” is the entire problem. “Do one thing and do it well” was the whole mantra, which was completely ignored with the disaster that is git. It’s objectively awful.

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Absolutely everything in computing needs to be 'understood' to be used.

Really? How familiar are you with how inodes work on a spinning platter vs an eMMC? Can you speak intelligently about how virtual machines segregate their ram boundaries whilst still maintaining decent performance? What is your familiarity with FIPS?

You’re very incorrect.

And you were born with an understanding of how a keyboard and mouse worked or how windows seperated different GUI contexts and what all those symbols around them meant? I'm not saying you have to understand the nuts and bolts because abstractions exist but those abstractions still present you with a model and you need to understand that model to use them. People often present git's model mixed in with its nuts and bolts, which I think is unhelpful because the model is actually really simple and the nuts and bolts are not so important.

Have you never seen a toddler touch a non-touch screen and be like “wtf?” Or watch a child holding mom’s phone swipe away a text message alert?

Yes, good software is absolutely intuitive. Git is garbage.

Because they've already learned a model of how devices with screens work, albeit an imperfect one. Children are pretty good at learning. Software and systems should be easy to learn, but it's not a case of no learning.

So you agree then. People have been saying from inception that git isn’t intuitive.

I agree that git's UI is not particularly easy to learn, and it could be better in that regard (which is frustrating because its underlying model is about as simple as you can come up with, and I essentially can always think of what I want in that model easily but then have to google how to tell git to do it). What I object to is the idea that needing to understand something to use it is a problem.

You only have to learn three things to use a computer: Your shell, your editor, and your version control system.

That's it. That basic knowledge will carry you far, and will be useful a decade from now. Those are the three best afternoons you can spend. Do it out of respect for the computer.

I am gainfully employed because I’m decent at those 3 things. I’m not sure why you assume I’m not. Fair point though.

yeah I would really love to see a subset of git with a sane cli. would switch in a heartbeat.

Git has been re-designing their tooling over the last few years. Nowadays there exist really pleasant, easy to use versions of the main tools.

switch and restore replaced checkout. history is being developed to replace rebase for most common use cases. maintenance replaces gc. etc.

Fossil?

It could be so much better. At the same time, it’s one of the core tools for a developer. You’ll learn it eventually. You’re going to be using version control for decades. I’ve met devs many years into their careers who don’t understand rebase. It’s like going to a metal shop and they’re complaining about the learning curve on their welder and half the tradesmen are still at a novice level.

I still don't know it very well, and it's been well over a decade. I think it's a combination of a few things:

- I find it uninteresting. My version control needs are very simple.

- Most teams I have been in use a small subset of it.

- It's confusing terms and inconsistent cli are huge warning signs to not go down that rabbithole. Today instead of learning Git I read some Tony Hoare, much better.

I've been at once place where they rebased, and it was awful. Complete waste of time. (great place otherwise though)

Have you ever read any of the introductory material that the git project itself maintains for teaching how to use the tool?

- https://git-scm.com/docs/gittutorial

- https://git-scm.com/docs/giteveryday

- https://git-scm.com/docs/gitworkflows

- https://git-scm.com/docs/gitfaq

- https://git-scm.com/cheat-sheet

Or if you want to sit down and really learn the nuts and bolts

- https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

Looks like an incredibly dull way to waste hours of my finite life for microscopic benefit.

The first five links (i.e. not the book) are each only a few printed pages worth of text each or less. All together they are equivalent to like a single chapter of text in a book.

It really won't take hours. You probably read more than that just looking at HN for like 20 minutes.

Give it an hour or two. It is really not that complicated. A little bit of investment will pay huge dividends. Do yourself the favor.

I could say the same for reading Tony Hoare.

sounds like someone accidentally delete your repo because they didn't understand git and did a dumdum :P

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