Git Is Simpler Than You Think • Hacker News Board

Re: Git Is Simpler Than You Think

#11

Post by cpeterso » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:19 PM UTC

When git was born, many people complained about its poor usability and some people created friendlier "porcelain" scripts. Eventually, git itself became "good enough" and maintaining porcelain scripts became too much work to keep up.

Is it too late for an improved git user experience? With so many online tutorials and books, a new porcelain interface would have a tough time capturing much mind share (while still calling itself git).

For those looking for something simpler than git, I recommend eg (EasyGit), a one-file Perl wrapper:

http://people.gnome.org/~newren/eg/

Re: Git Is Simpler Than You Think

#12

Post by jasonkostempski » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:21 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #2

No, actually, it's not. And that post proves it. You can do some things to make it easier on yourself (and others) but it's not simple. You find out how un-simple it is when you hit one of those magical corner cases. Don't get me wrong, I love Git. I far prefer it over SVN and CVS. But it's not simple.

Well, to be fair, the title is not 'Git Is Simple'. I'm just starting to really use Git and after reading this it seems a little simpler to me. Personally, I think Git is relatively simple as far as version control systems go, it's forgetting 5 years worth of knowledge of SVN and the nice visual tools that support it that is hard.

Re: Git Is Simpler Than You Think

#13

Post by par » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:23 PM UTC

Love the concept of the article but right out of the gate comparing it to a Model T and saying you must be a mechanic to operate it will likely result in a high bounce rate, and possibly just serve to re-affirm someones belief that git is, indeed, complex.

Re: Git Is Simpler Than You Think

#14

Post by macrael » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:31 PM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #11

When git was born, many people complained about its poor usability and some people created friendlier "porcelain" scripts. Eventually, git itself became "good enough" and maintaining porcelain scripts became too much work to keep up. Is it too late for an improved git user experience? With so many online tutorials and books, a new porcelain interface would have a tough time capturing much mind share (while still call…

Personally, I think github is trying to become that simpler interface. We'll see how they do, but so far it is promising.

Re: Git Is Simpler Than You Think

#15

Post by nfarina » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:35 PM UTC

js2 wrote: post #9

wccrawford wrote: post #2

No, actually, it's not. And that post proves it. You can do some things to make it easier on yourself (and others) but it's not simple. You find out how un-simple it is when you hit one of those magical corner cases. Don't get me wrong, I love Git. I far prefer it over SVN and CVS. But it's not simple.

Git is conceptually simple, but has a baroque interface. It's nearly impossible to form a proper mental model of what's going on under the hood from its CLI. The point of this article is that if you take the time to learn how git is actually constructed, the CLI becomes a lot more bearable, and is less likely to leave you in distress when Something Unexpected Happens.

I wish I had written your first line!

Re: Git Is Simpler Than You Think

#16

Post by psychotik » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:40 PM UTC

I wish the author would've explained the motivation to move from SVN to Git, other than 'it was winning over the web'. Was SVN just not working for them, for some reason? Are there things that he and him company wanted to do that wasn't possible with SVN, but was with Git?

Re: Git Is Simpler Than You Think

#17

Post by braco_alva » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:44 PM UTC

jbredeche wrote: post #8

Great, entertaining writing style. Probably the most readable intro to Git I've ever read.

Yes, for someone who has never use Git is a very nice introduction to it.

Re: Git Is Simpler Than You Think

#18

Post by nfarina » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:46 PM UTC

psychotik wrote: post #16

I wish the author would've explained the motivation to move from SVN to Git, other than 'it was winning over the web'. Was SVN just not working for them, for some reason? Are there things that he and him company wanted to do that wasn't possible with SVN, but was with Git?

Part of it was that SVN was the last service running on a server I wanted to shut down. The other part was simply momentum. Github (and therefore Git) were too exciting to not want to be a part of. I didn't want to be left behind. That said, SVN was perfectly serviceable, though I don't imagine I'll ever use it again.

Re: Git Is Simpler Than You Think

#19

Post by bugsbunnyak » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:47 PM UTC

js2 wrote: post #9

wccrawford wrote: post #2

No, actually, it's not. And that post proves it. You can do some things to make it easier on yourself (and others) but it's not simple. You find out how un-simple it is when you hit one of those magical corner cases. Don't get me wrong, I love Git. I far prefer it over SVN and CVS. But it's not simple.

Git is conceptually simple, but has a baroque interface. It's nearly impossible to form a proper mental model of what's going on under the hood from its CLI. The point of this article is that if you take the time to learn how git is actually constructed, the CLI becomes a lot more bearable, and is less likely to leave you in distress when Something Unexpected Happens.

I struggled for several hours last night to fix the history of a git-svn repo that had fallen out of sync. Eventually I started to grok it and the fix took all of two commands. I think that this semi-obfuscation may have been an intentional attempt to improve the SNR of kernel contributions - by putting in place a mild cognitive obstacle...

Re: Git Is Simpler Than You Think

#20

Post by martey » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 5:47 PM UTC

par wrote: post #13

Love the concept of the article but right out of the gate comparing it to a Model T and saying you must be a mechanic to operate it will likely result in a high bounce rate, and possibly just serve to re-affirm someones belief that git is, indeed, complex.

Should writers care about the opinions of people who do not read their entire article, but leave after seeing a diagram of a Model T?

I think the intended audience of the article are people who are already at least vaguely familiar with Git, but do not know its inner workings. The thesis seems to be "Git is complex, but not as complex as you might fear reading 'man git'".