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Die Git Die

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Re: Die Git Die

#21

Post by damncabbage »

kstenerud wrote: post #14
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #8

I don't know why, but I always end up telling every single person who either 1) Bitches about git, or 2) asks for help, that I always, always, always tell "git push" or "git pull" which remote and branch. It's muscle memory and makes everything more explicit and easy to understand. Although, in this case, it sounds like you expect git to be intuitive. (Which it is not) So this basically amounts to a blog post complai…

It's a problem of user interface design. Git's user-machine interface does not follow the principle of least astonishment. It's not orthogonal. Functionality is grouped in very strange ways (you list, move, rename and delete branches with branch, but create branches using checkout? Seriously???). And don't even get me started on the nightmare that is submodules. The whole thing reminds me of the bad old unix days of…

you list, move, rename and delete branches with branch, but create branches using checkout? Seriously???

  git checkout -b new-branch
... is a shortcut for:

  git branch new-branch
  git checkout new-branch
You can create the branch or otherwise manipulate it without actually checking it out, so it's useful to have it separate and have a shortcut.

(I agree that git's interface is terrible, but I disagree that this is one of those cases. :) )

Re: Die Git Die

#22

Post by jrockway »

kennymeyers wrote: post #16
jrockway wrote: post #7

"The git, the?" But seriously, yes, you have to learn how to use Git in order to use Git. But you don't have to use Git. Click here to renew your Visual Source Safe license, or better, just copy your file to file.1 every time you edit it. No way that can go wrong!

I understand Hacker News is a place for "serious" discussion, but a good Simpsons' reference always deserves props.

No one who writes a version control rant could be an evil man.

Re: Die Git Die

#23

Post by eridius »

This just seems like yet another case of someone who thinks he's too smart to read the manual. RTFM exists for a reason.

Re: Die Git Die

#25

Post by stormbrew »

jrockway wrote: post #7

"The git, the?" But seriously, yes, you have to learn how to use Git in order to use Git. But you don't have to use Git. Click here to renew your Visual Source Safe license, or better, just copy your file to file.1 every time you edit it. No way that can go wrong!

You say that, but the next version of Visual Studio's gonna have git built in. Seriously. Gonna be a lot of new (and probably confused) users out there.

Re: Die Git Die

#26

Post by jhaglund »

kansface wrote: post #9
abimaelmartell wrote: post #3

you need to read "Git for dummies"

git has no user interface. git expects its users to have an in depth understanding of its implementation details. These are failures of git. Ideally, studying abstruse man pages to avert disaster wouldn't be required of new users.

Git doesn't have much of a user interface because it's target is developers who want to use the command line. Git is confusing until it's not, and then it's awesome.

It's kinda like you're using wget to surf the web, and complaining that it doesn't have a GUI.

http://git-scm.com/downloads/guis

Re: Die Git Die

#27

Post by stormbrew »

Git has a lot of UI problems. This is not really surprising. It's gotten a lot better, but I do think that no matter how proud Torvalds is of the fact that he never looked at another version control system for inspiration, a lot of pain could have been avoided if he had (even while still going in the different directions he did). Not all of us had the 'luxury' of never working with version control before.

But don't get me wrong. On the whole, git is fantastic and a real improvement on its predecessors.

Re: Die Git Die

#28

Post by [deleted] »

abimaelmartell wrote: post #17
kansface wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

git has no user interface. git expects its users to have an in depth understanding of its implementation details. These are failures of git. Ideally, studying abstruse man pages to avert disaster wouldn't be required of new users.

i been using git for almost two years, never needed a gui

[deleted]

Re: Die Git Die

#29

Post by defen »

> However, git will not pull matching branches. That means that all your branches except your current branch will not get updated when you pull.

> Of course, a less good but at least sane behavior would have been if pull also pulled matching branches by default

I don't see any way this could work in the face of potentially having merge conflicts in non-current branches.

Re: Die Git Die

#30

Post by niggler »

jhaglund wrote: post #26
kansface wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

git has no user interface. git expects its users to have an in depth understanding of its implementation details. These are failures of git. Ideally, studying abstruse man pages to avert disaster wouldn't be required of new users.

Git doesn't have much of a user interface because it's target is developers who want to use the command line. Git is confusing until it's not, and then it's awesome. It's kinda like you're using wget to surf the web, and complaining that it doesn't have a GUI. http://git-scm.com/downloads/guis

GUI != UI

parent comment is arguing that the command-line interface is nontrivial, which is a fair criticism. Contrast with 'cp' or 'mv'

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