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I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

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Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#161
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moment something ridiculous needs to be done like a rebase Rebase, "ridiculous"? Uh oh. It's a very valuable tool and it's a quite simple concept. I agree that the user interface could be less confusing, though. Git is just a malleable graph made out of patches. The concept is really simple (even simpler than hg). The UI could be better but the manpages are rather good at explaining how it works.

Ridiculous, as in, a case where we actually need it is rare enough that by the time the need arises, everyone's forgotten how it works. We're not in a shop where one-off merge commits are a thing anyone really cares about, so rebases usually mean things like "Somebody used the wrong committer name" or "Somebody did a branch merge incorrectly and now the history makes no sense". The git manpages suffer from the same p…

> The git manpages suffer from the same problem as the sudo manpage(1). I want to know how to do "X" and why it works that way, and perhaps see examples explained.

Perhaps that's might apply to some git manpages, but man git-rebase in particular is really good. It has exactly what you want, example situations, the command lines to achieve them, complete with pretty ascii art diagrams.

It could still be improved, though. There might be some "oops I screwed up, what next" situations too. I think `git rebase --abort` works most of the time these days but it wasn't always so.

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#162
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code collaboration tools have a strong network effect due to them being ultimately social tools, and we expect categories affected by the network effect to have winner/losers mechanics. Of course, they don't actually have to, but it's a common expectation and a common outcome. For equivalents to "code collaboration tools", instead of "programming languages", "text editors" and "build tools", try "social networks" (Fa…

> English won English did not won. It might be widely spoken in the 21st century, but so were Greek, Egyptian, Latin, French, Portuguese and Spanish once upon a time. I might be writing this in English now, but saying it won implies no change in common language will ever happen again. Given the history of mankind and some of the countries I had the pleasure to visit on my life so far, I doubt it. Specially since most…

Well, yes. Everything else I've mentioned is also dependant on cultural contexts that may vary dramatically over time. I surely hope Facebook hasn't won forever.

For what it's worth, I'm not a native English speaker.

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#163
post #142
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever heard of a thing called powershell?

Is that like Bash for Kids?

Maybe that's a poor description of a tool with full access to the entire class hierarchy of the .NET Framework. You could write a GUI program in it with WPF, although most people would take it as a kindness if you didn't.

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#164
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but on the availability of programmers who know how to use it The sheer prevalence of git "tutorials" would suggest that most programmers don't actually know how to use it. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1597/

This comic is shockingly spot on for me and my group. We all know the basics, but only at a "type this to get this result" level. The moment something ridiculous needs to be done like a rebase, I get called, and without fail need to have a few stack overflow tabs open to figure it out. Git's a phenomenal system, but sometimes part of me thinks it does require a PhD to fully grok.

That's the problem with git. It's extremely powerful, but requires a lot of knowledge to use well. It's a lot like a F1 racing car: the performance of such a car is phenomenal compared to a regular car, but the driver has to really know what he's doing to operate the thing at all. Just google for "F1 steering wheel" to see the controls they have to operate.

Honestly I think it's an accident of history that git became so popular for software development outside of Linux kernel development.

It doesn't help that git is really a good example of evolution, as seen in the UI. It would have been better if it had been architected more thoroughly before releasing for general use.

Re: I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial

#165
Mercurial has to be one of the best examples of incredibly high quality Software Engineering out there. It is very well-designed, reliable, fast, easy to use, well-documented and has a great community behind it. Matt deserves huge kudos for his enormous effort and commitment over the years. And like a true gentleman, he is leaving in style to ensure the transition is smooth.
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