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Git is too hard

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101–110 of 821 posts

Re: Git is too hard

#101

Post by oerpli »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #36
remirk wrote: post #4

Git is one of those technologies where it's super important to get a good grasp of how to internals work. Once you got that, it get easier to answer git questions for others or yourself, and to read the documentation or man pages, as you know what is happening. With how software devs use git, it's 100% worth it to read a good book on it.

I am not sure that is true at all. It’s way more important to understand that git has 0 consistency of what the command name is and what object it manipulates. Git checkout can create both branches and files. Why? Wouldn’t it be easier to have two commands for checking out a file from a different branch and creating a new branch?

I thought they addressed this with "git switch".

https://bluecast.tech/blog/git-switch-branch/

Re: Git is too hard

#102

Post by [deleted] »

dimgl wrote: post #6

I don't agree at all. Git is the simplest version control system I've ever used. The concept of merging, rebasing, cherry-picking, and resetting works so naturally that I'm basically going to expect this level of ease of use from any VCS I use going forward. That being said, I know there are some who have trouble with Git. But IMO it isn't because Git is hard, but because they don't have to truly understand Git to us…

[deleted]

Re: Git is too hard

#103

Post by rich_sasha »

But what's the alternative? I dislike Git for its complexity, guns helpfully cocked and pointing at your feet, obscure commands etc. but still feel it's the best of the available tools.

I really wanted to like Mercurial. UI seems much nicer. But there's no support from major tools. Cmdline tools are slow on startup - not Mercurial's fault as such, but affects me as the user - in particular waiting for the cmdline prompt showing Mercurial branch etc. Learning materials are a bit confused - so many different types of branches, a lot of popular materials seem out-dated, etc. Everyone in the whole world knows survival Git, very few know anything else.

Long story short, if I were setting up a collaborative software project (be it commercial or FOSS), I would reluctantly but unwaveringly choose Git. Truth is, 95% of the time it doesn't get in the way of getting work done, and the remaining 5% is not worth going against the grain on all the above points.

Re: Git is too hard

#104

Post by oblio »

rusk wrote: post #89
oblio wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't need a cheat sheet. We shouldn't need Linus's brain dump to be able to use a tool. The Git UI directly models the Git internal model and that's just bad design. It's a completely leaky abstraction. I can use git all right but the fact that I need about 20 different commands to do my job, 95% of them with extra parameters and almost all of them with names that don't reflect what I want to do from a functi…

I hope I never end up working with you bud. “Where is the code?” “Oh I’m sorry I couldn’t do it because it was hard can I still be paid please?”

With that attitude, I definitely wouldn't want to work with you either. I also love the assumptions about me and the thinly veiled ad-hominem :-)

We should be able to admit that a tool has a crap UI and cut out the macho geek attitude.

I've been working in this field for about of 15 years and the amount of needless pain we endure from core tools is unimaginable. I'm waaaay past the learning curve for Unix tools, git, etc., but let's not pretend that they're awesome UX wise. They're awful.

We've just learned to endure the pain and we've internalized it.

Stockholm syndrome at its finest.

Re: Git is too hard

#105

Post by oblio »

jodrellblank wrote: post #98
rusk wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope I never end up working with you bud. “Where is the code?” “Oh I’m sorry I couldn’t do it because it was hard can I still be paid please?”

I refer to my comment from a couple of days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25080013

Oh my, that comment is pure gold :-)

Its putting into words something I've been thinking for a long time, thank you for the great comment!

Re: Git is too hard

#106

Post by tankenmate »

ramraj07 wrote: post #95
ghayes wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow your logic: why not take a few days to learn the fundamentals of git? I did that a few years back (and I'm not saying I read the source code, just learned about the base concepts from a few blogs and played around with some more advanced commands), and it has paid dividends _every single day for the last several years_. For example, I avoid tracking branches and have started using `git fetch`, `…

I am limited by time on what I can learn, every day I have five other things I'd rather spend my time learning about instead of git. The "git experts" that I know of are no more productive than me and more often than not do annoying things like rewriting commit histories after I made comments in their PRs, that I'm not convinced it's worth the day or two I need to learn it fully. In the end git is not in production,…

Before undertaking his craft, the artisan first sharpens his tools.

Re: Git is too hard

#107

Post by tankenmate »

ajuc wrote: post #99
ghayes wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow your logic: why not take a few days to learn the fundamentals of git? I did that a few years back (and I'm not saying I read the source code, just learned about the base concepts from a few blogs and played around with some more advanced commands), and it has paid dividends _every single day for the last several years_. For example, I avoid tracking branches and have started using `git fetch`, `…

The problem is - if you're not using some feature every month you won't remember how to do it anyway when you finally need to use it. So there's little point reading about exotic features upfront other than to know they exist. And which features are exotic depends on your workflow. It would help if git interface was consistent enough to make remembering this stuff easier. For example I never remember the exact option…

I would suggest it's far better to understand the data structures inherent in git and how those data structure changes are tracked and merged. Then almost all operations in git become clear.

And as a side bonus it will probably make you a better coder.

Re: Git is too hard

#108

Post by tokamak-teapot »

Arguments against git being 'too hard' seem to fall into these categories:

* It's not actually hard.

    ** You don't understand it. Everyone else is fine with it. You just haven't spent the time to understand it like everyone else has.
    ** Ok maybe lots of people don't understand it. They just haven't spent the time to understand it like I and others have.
* It is actually hard.

    ** You're not intelligent enough to understand it, but everyone else is.
    ** Ok maybe lots of people aren't intelligent enough to understand it, but that doesn't matter because I am and so are others.
IMHO the more intelligent response is:

* If people think it's hard, that's a problem, and we can use our understanding / intelligence to help make a version control system (layered on git if that works) that doesn't require the depth of understanding or intelligence to work with - for everyone.

I've worked with thousands of developers and my experience is that even the brightest still make mistakes when given sharp tools, and when you're just trying to get your job done but you've tied yourself into a knot with distributed tools that try to help you deal with merges of turing-complete text, you can have a bad afternoon.

I'm hoping darcs / pijul / something else a bit more 'friendly' becomes popular and those who want to concentrate on their code and not their tools can get some time back.

Re: Git is too hard

#109

Post by feisuzhu »

ramraj07 wrote: post #95
ghayes wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow your logic: why not take a few days to learn the fundamentals of git? I did that a few years back (and I'm not saying I read the source code, just learned about the base concepts from a few blogs and played around with some more advanced commands), and it has paid dividends _every single day for the last several years_. For example, I avoid tracking branches and have started using `git fetch`, `…

I am limited by time on what I can learn, every day I have five other things I'd rather spend my time learning about instead of git. The "git experts" that I know of are no more productive than me and more often than not do annoying things like rewriting commit histories after I made comments in their PRs, that I'm not convinced it's worth the day or two I need to learn it fully. In the end git is not in production,…

> In the end git is not in production

Git ends in my production multiple times.

1. In my side project game, auto update and replay system is based on Git. For every update, there will be a commit appended to the code repo which is the most recent update. If a player wants to replay a game in previous version, just checkout the appropriate commit, and run the replay using exact the same code. I'm freed from backward compatibility issue & update subsystem which handles diffing, compression, transporting by a single decision. https://github.com/feisuzhu/thbattle/blob/master/src/autoupd...

2. Another project written by me, which is a monitoring system, distributes it's rules by a git repo. Monitoring agents in the nodes cares about authenticity of distributed rules. So I just sign the tree hash and embed the signature in commit message, which will be later validated by monitoring agents. https://github.com/leancloud/satori/blob/master/satori-rules...

Re: Git is too hard

#110

Post by beshrkayali »

It's not hard nor easy. Git takes time to learn and understand properly, like a lot of things in technology. Sure, it's internally very complicated, but it does a great job at providing a sane interface to use it. I think the problem is really in the approach that a lot of git users think of git in the first place. It's seen as a requirement rather than an aid and solution to a set of very tricky problems. The actual point of VCS in general can't be summed in a sentence. I think the appropriate approach here is to recognize that it will take time to see the value of and learn how/why git does things the way it does.
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