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Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

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Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

#101

Post by tester756 »

Apreche wrote: post #77

A lot of people these days have just been thrown into the fire with Git as the first and only VCS they’ve ever seen. I’m not that old, but I’m old enough to have used RCS, CVS, SVN, then finally Git. I started using Git super early, before GitHub existed. You may not believe me, but Git was the answer to all my prayers. All those previous systems had fundamental architectural flaws that made them a complete nightmare…

>I understand that people might want to make it easier, since the UI is complex, but that’s never going to work. If you abstract away the complexity of the UI, you will necessarily abstract away the power.

I disagree, really.

There is not fundamental reason why you cannot have user-friendly UI for 98% of the cases and some "advanced" for those 2%.

Just like GUIs have "advanced" settings, the CLI can have well designed 10 commands for basic usage that are taught to newbies and then advanced ones.

Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

#102

Post by syndicatedjelly »

flohofwoe wrote: post #96
Apreche wrote: post #77

A lot of people these days have just been thrown into the fire with Git as the first and only VCS they’ve ever seen. I’m not that old, but I’m old enough to have used RCS, CVS, SVN, then finally Git. I started using Git super early, before GitHub existed. You may not believe me, but Git was the answer to all my prayers. All those previous systems had fundamental architectural flaws that made them a complete nightmare…

Git keeps the entire history on your local machine, this becomes a problem if your project grows to several hundred GB (not untypical in game dev). Even SVN was much better for working with large repositories, you only needed a big server. Git is quite nice for "source code only projects though".

Does Git LFS help with this problem?

Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

#103

Post by tester756 »

aulin wrote: post #63
pulse7 wrote: post #6

Of course there is a room for improvement... One of the biggest issues is usability/user experience: pull, fetch, checkout, commit, push, rebase - what is all this and what is the exact meaning? I need simple English terms for my work - like update and save - nothing more. Why do I need to worry about implementation details and terms? If I can not explain it to my wife, then I can not use it for binary documents whic…

Imagine an electronic engineer complaining about an oscilloscope being hard to use because he cannot explain what all those knobs do to his wife. We are professionals, our tools should be powerful for the advanced user, not beginner friendly.

>We are professionals, our tools should be powerful for the advanced user, not beginner friendly.

You can have both - powerful and user friendly.

This idea that engineer's tools must be a mess that is fine as long as enables to do something is idiotic.

The same argument was repeated whenever C or C++ vs Rust discussions were happening

"Just learn C and memory management (and all the quirks)"

"Just use this new language constructs and you're fine..."

and in reality we ended with a lot of CVEs - 70% in both Chrome and Windows were related to mem. issues.

There's absolutely no reason why git's CLI cannot be better than it currently is. Once again - there is no reason.

Proof? There are CLI wrappers or even GUIs like GitHub Desktop that make whole experience way better.

Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

#104

Post by bryanlarsen »

tehbeard wrote: post #88
bryanlarsen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The git model has fundamental limitations because it saves snapshots rather than changes, and doesn't capture some metadata changes like renames. A tool like Darcs or one of its spiritual descendants will have fewer merge conflicts than git. Totally agree on your main point though. The benefits of switching are far lower than the costs.

> ..because it saves snapshots rather than changes.. I might be misremembering the technical details, but isn't that only the case in a git repo with zero pack files? Will grant that the lack of metadata on renames can be issue when a file is heavily refactored alongside it's relocation.

https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Understanding_Darcs/Patch_th...

Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

#105

Post by tester756 »

dolni wrote: post #86
aulin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine an electronic engineer complaining about an oscilloscope being hard to use because he cannot explain what all those knobs do to his wife. We are professionals, our tools should be powerful for the advanced user, not beginner friendly.

There has been a lot of push to commoditize software engineering. Unfortunately that has resulted in a swarm of people who want developer salaries without the work or expertise. Git definitely has some warts but you are right. It is an industry tool for expert, professional use. Some complexity is inherent to the problem of version control. Learning how to use your tools is part of ANY trade.

>It is an industry tool for expert, professional use.

If you were talking about things like Kubernetes, LLVM, Ghidra then I'd agree.

But no git. This is not some expert tool.

This tool's purpose is literally to manage your characters' history, that's it.

Git could be used by any other profession that deals with letters - article writers, book writers, etc, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

#106

Post by blibble »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #93
dreamcompiler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies host git besides github (gitlab and bitbucket to name two), and you can spin up one of your own in about 1 minute on your hardware or on a private cloud vps. A github server is much easier to set up than a subversion server. The reason people use github is because it's free, and because it has issue tracking and a wiki and forking which plain git knows nothing about.

> A github server is much easier to set up than a subversion server. You can't set up a GitHub server.

you can download a VM image of it from their website

Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

#107

Post by Apreche »

tester756 wrote: post #101
Apreche wrote: post #77

A lot of people these days have just been thrown into the fire with Git as the first and only VCS they’ve ever seen. I’m not that old, but I’m old enough to have used RCS, CVS, SVN, then finally Git. I started using Git super early, before GitHub existed. You may not believe me, but Git was the answer to all my prayers. All those previous systems had fundamental architectural flaws that made them a complete nightmare…

>I understand that people might want to make it easier, since the UI is complex, but that’s never going to work. If you abstract away the complexity of the UI, you will necessarily abstract away the power. I disagree, really. There is not fundamental reason why you cannot have user-friendly UI for 98% of the cases and some "advanced" for those 2%. Just like GUIs have "advanced" settings, the CLI can have well designe…

Do it then. Many have tried. All have failed. Talk is cheap.

Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

#108

Post by briHass »

yodon wrote: post #81

Along what axis do you want the VCS to be "better" than git? For example, git's cli user interface is monstrous (yes, I know, you personally have 800 cli commands memorized and get them all right every time, that doesn't make it "good"). From the outset, the maintainers of git basically decided "it's too much work to make all the cli flags behave and interact consistently" so they didn't. This allowed git to grow fas…

I generally don't hear too many complaints about GIT in the Windows/.NET development world, probably because there are good UI front ends and there's not as much 'tough guy' cred from sticking to the CLI. Visual Studio does a decent job of abstracting the GIT nuances, but I personally use GIT Extensions, which looks and feels much better on Windows than the other cross platform UIs.

I drop to the CLI occasionally, especially for multi step or automated scripts, but you can pry a nice visual commit graph and full featured integrated diff viewer from my dead hands. GIT is powerful and option-laden; the perfect tool for a UI to aide in discoverability. The CLI feels like programming in a text editor vs a real IDE

Re: Ask HN: Can we do better than Git for version control?

#109

Post by tester756 »

Apreche wrote: post #107
tester756 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I understand that people might want to make it easier, since the UI is complex, but that’s never going to work. If you abstract away the complexity of the UI, you will necessarily abstract away the power. I disagree, really. There is not fundamental reason why you cannot have user-friendly UI for 98% of the cases and some "advanced" for those 2%. Just like GUIs have "advanced" settings, the CLI can have well designe…

Do it then. Many have tried. All have failed. Talk is cheap.

>Do it then. Many have tried. All have failed. Talk is cheap.

I'm, just like many other people using GitHub Desktop (or Git Kraken or Git Extension, but I dont like this one)

when I'm working in GUI environment, that's proof that it is possible.

The problem with creating 3rd party tool that's CLI wrapper is that you cannot rely on it being installed on the system.

That's why such solutions usually fail - because you risk relying on stuff that may not get traction and you'd be better sticking to "official" syntax in long run.

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