Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beej's Guide to Git

beej.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 318 posts

Re: Beej's Guide to Git

#11

Post by kevinqi »

rco8786 wrote: post #6

I have nothing but fond memories of reading Beej's guides. It's also this sort of work that's becoming less necessary with AI, for better or worse. This appears to be a crazy good guide, but I bet asking e.g. Claude to teach you about git (specific concepts or generate the whole guide outline and go wide on it) would be at least as good.

I don't disagree, but since the quality of AI is largely a function of the quality of human content, there's always going to be value in well-written human content. If humans stop producing content, I think the value of AI/LLMs drop significantly as well.

Re: Beej's Guide to Git

#12

Post by mhh__ »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #8
rco8786 wrote: post #6

I have nothing but fond memories of reading Beej's guides. It's also this sort of work that's becoming less necessary with AI, for better or worse. This appears to be a crazy good guide, but I bet asking e.g. Claude to teach you about git (specific concepts or generate the whole guide outline and go wide on it) would be at least as good.

Seems more efficient to have one reference book rather than generating entire new 20 chapter books for every person. I also think if you are at the “don’t know what you don’t know” point of learning a topic it’s very hard to direct an AI to generate comprehensive learning material.

True although the don't know aspect is where LLMs will be magic. I envy today's youth for having them (and I'm not that old at all)

I remember fumbling around for ages when I first started coding trying to work out how to save data from my programs. Obviously I wanted a file but 13 year old me took a surprisingly long time to work that out.

Almost impossible to imagine with AI on hand but we will see more slop-merchants.

Re: Beej's Guide to Git

#13

Post by boneitis »

I'm really interested and really hoping this is something I can sink my teeth into. I've always had frustrating experiences with trying to wrap my head around git and have to regularly use it at my job.

Branching, making commits, and creating pull requests come easy, but beyond that, I know utterly nothing about it.

Re: Beej's Guide to Git

#14

Post by vvpan »

dijit wrote: post #3

Well, what's terrifying is that the guide is so long . I am aware that beej's guides are typically quite comprehensive, but the vast nuances of git truly eluded me until this. I guess Jujitsu would wind up being a much slimmer guide, or at least one that would be discoverable largely by humans?

It tells me that git is the wrong tool for the majority of people but it just happened to stick.

Re: Beej's Guide to Git

#15

Post by jonahx »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #8
rco8786 wrote: post #6

I have nothing but fond memories of reading Beej's guides. It's also this sort of work that's becoming less necessary with AI, for better or worse. This appears to be a crazy good guide, but I bet asking e.g. Claude to teach you about git (specific concepts or generate the whole guide outline and go wide on it) would be at least as good.

Seems more efficient to have one reference book rather than generating entire new 20 chapter books for every person. I also think if you are at the “don’t know what you don’t know” point of learning a topic it’s very hard to direct an AI to generate comprehensive learning material.

> Seems more efficient to have one reference book rather than generating entire new 20 chapter books for every person.

The main advantage of LLMs is that you can ask specific questions about things that confuse you, which makes iterating to a correct mental model much faster. It's like having your own personal tutor at your beck and call. Good guidebooks attempt to do this statically... anticipate questions and confusions at the right points, and it's a great skill to do this well. But it's still not the same as full interactivity.

Re: Beej's Guide to Git

#16

Post by stephen_g »

vvpan wrote: post #14
dijit wrote: post #3

Well, what's terrifying is that the guide is so long . I am aware that beej's guides are typically quite comprehensive, but the vast nuances of git truly eluded me until this. I guess Jujitsu would wind up being a much slimmer guide, or at least one that would be discoverable largely by humans?

It tells me that git is the wrong tool for the majority of people but it just happened to stick.

I think it's probably the opposite, Git has amassed a lot of complexity because it's been adapted to being a tool that is able to can satisfy the majority of requirements.

I've never found that I need to touch most of it in the 15 or so years I've been using it, but it's there if your project needs it.

Re: Beej's Guide to Git

#17

Post by rco8786 »

jonahx wrote: post #15
yoyohello13 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems more efficient to have one reference book rather than generating entire new 20 chapter books for every person. I also think if you are at the “don’t know what you don’t know” point of learning a topic it’s very hard to direct an AI to generate comprehensive learning material.

> Seems more efficient to have one reference book rather than generating entire new 20 chapter books for every person. The main advantage of LLMs is that you can ask specific questions about things that confuse you, which makes iterating to a correct mental model much faster. It's like having your own personal tutor at your beck and call. Good guidebooks attempt to do this statically... anticipate questions and confu…

Wow this is really well stated, thanks.

Re: Beej's Guide to Git

#18

Post by Barrin92 »

vvpan wrote: post #14
dijit wrote: post #3

Well, what's terrifying is that the guide is so long . I am aware that beej's guides are typically quite comprehensive, but the vast nuances of git truly eluded me until this. I guess Jujitsu would wind up being a much slimmer guide, or at least one that would be discoverable largely by humans?

It tells me that git is the wrong tool for the majority of people but it just happened to stick.

No. Git is a complex program but version control is an inherently complex problem that requires powerful tools. There's certain set of problems where, as a programmer, you're going to have to sit down and actually read the book.

The universe doesn't owe you an easy 10 minute video solution to everything, it's an annoying educational expectation that people seem to have developed. Some things are just that difficult and you have to learn them regardless.

Re: Beej's Guide to Git

#19

Post by usefulcat »

rco8786 wrote: post #6

I have nothing but fond memories of reading Beej's guides. It's also this sort of work that's becoming less necessary with AI, for better or worse. This appears to be a crazy good guide, but I bet asking e.g. Claude to teach you about git (specific concepts or generate the whole guide outline and go wide on it) would be at least as good.

This is the sort of work that makes it possible for AI to be useful at all.
Post reply on HN