A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers • Hacker News Board

Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

#201

Post by yoz-y » Sun, May 20, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

geocar wrote: post #178

yoz-y wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think that javascript as a language has much advantages for learning than, let's say Lua or Python. However, the fact that it is linked to HTML and DOM make it very easy to have immediate feedback without installing any tooling or IDEs. But then, modern JavaScript is quite different from what one can learn just by using the devtools. I think that once one starts to use more advanced js tooling, things get qu…

You're making a mistake of putting a box around "JavaScript the Language" -- even admitting a concession of "HTML and DOM" you miss the point: Lua and Python do not have billions of devices able to download and run their applications. Python and Lua don't have that by a long shot.

That was my point. JS has a huge advantage in the ecosystem but not many as a language itself.

If we compare pure Node with Python then I think python is better for learning as it has less weirdness to it.

You are right though. Such comparison is only useful as a mental exercise as in the real world the browser and js are intimately tied.

Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

#202

Post by jgalentine007 » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

always_good wrote: post #162

jgalentine007 wrote: post #111

Code in the project looks really well done. It just needs semicolons ;) I don't get the whole no semicolon movement, especially when you probably have to work with C/C++/C#/Java at some point and it means retraining your brain. Also semicolons help visually distinguish commands from control. 2 spaces I can definitely get behind!

You're dramatizing the mental overhead needed to not write semicolons. Every serious project uses a linter that can add or remove them based on some flag. I don't use semicolons. It's an unnecessary character. Life moves on. I'd say Rust has worst of both worlds, if you want to compare it to something, where having or not having a semicolon can mean two different things (return the value or return void). That's an ex…

Yeah, you're probably right on the mental overhead. I guess it is just best to use a linter and whatever style guide you prefer (most argue for semicolons.)

Using semicolons to stay in rhythm with similar languages that mandate them might be the worst reason, but it is a reason none the less (I literally spend equal amounts of time coding in C++/C#/Java/Javascript, so there is no need to 'think' in my case.)

I too like to do things out of spite.

Re: A pure JavaScript implementation of Git for Node and browsers

#203

Post by pseudalopex » Thu, May 31, 2018, 3:20 AM UTC

taeric wrote: post #107

pseudalopex wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mercurial had major projects too. Mozilla still uses it. What it didn't have was GitHub.

Good counterpoint! Oddly, in my mind, Mozilla is not nearly as new dev friendly as the kernel is. I suspect that is just a bias in my thinking, though. I feel that git was winning a lot of mindshare even before github. I know I certainly was using it before github. Big plus for me was the git-svn bridge that existed. Especially since I was working remotely at the time, it was much faster for me to do checkouts with a…

Git was popular in some influential circles before GitHub, but it only became a monoculture several years later. hgsubversion came out in 2008, after git-svn but before most people were using any DVCS. Also, SVK was around before git-svn.

You might be underestimating how much support Mercurial had in the late 2000s. Mozilla, Sun, Google, and Microsoft all picked Mercurial over Git. Even GitHub published hg-git so people could use the Mercurial client with Git repos. Some ecosystems gravitated to Git (Linux, Perl, Ruby) and some gravitated to Mercurial (Windows, Java, Python).

By 2010, DVCS comparisons consistently cited GitHub's UX and network effects as significant advantages for Git. Atlassian, Google, and Microsoft all added Git hosting in 2012. By 2015, Python, Google, and Microsoft moved to GitHub because everyone else was on GitHub.

I think the landscape would look very different if GitHub hadn't come along when it did or had added Mercurial support instead of Subversion.