Live data from Hacker News

Git in layman's terms: isomorphic contours in source-code phase space

tartley.com

21–24 of 24 posts

Re: Git in layman's terms: isomorphic contours in source-code phase space

#21
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you could let us in on the joke?

This very complex "simple" explanation of Git is funny because Git is rumored to have a steep learning curve, and the Git documentation is very heavy on theory and models. It is also a bit funny because a lot of educated readers will try to make sense of the explanation, but the explanation is utter nonsense and has nothing to do with how Git works.

You left a layer of the joke: in order to be sure that the explanation is nonsense, you have to understand mathematical concepts that are much more complicated than git's architecture.

Re: Git in layman's terms: isomorphic contours in source-code phase space

#22
post #17

Guys, please. This isn't an analogy, it's satire. He's angry at how terrible he thinks the git manuals are.

The git manuals aren't fun because the git porcelain isn't fun. A better command-line interface would be simpler to explain.

Re: Git in layman's terms: isomorphic contours in source-code phase space

#23
This reminds me a lot of turbo/retroencabulator [1]. After you've watched the video (don't go first or it will spoil it), you can check out the wikipedia article.[2]

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboencabulator

Re: Git in layman's terms: isomorphic contours in source-code phase space

#24

The best analogy I've used in explaining Git to my non-tech friends is that "it's like kind of like photoshop layers" It's definitely not complete but gets them to appreciate it.

I liked this conceptual introduction: http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/technical/git/
Post reply on HN