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I see a future in jj

steveklabnik.com

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Re: I see a future in jj

#31

Post by nonethewiser »

steveklabnik wrote: post #14
jimbokun wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing not mentioned in the article: what advantages does jj offer over plain git?

So for me, the most compelling thing about jj is that it is somehow simpler than git, while also being more powerful than git. What I mean by simpler is, there's fewer features, which makes things easier to pick up, because these features fit together in a way that's more coherent than git's. By more powerful, I mean jj lets me regularly do things that are possible, but annoying and/or difficult in git. I loved git.…

can you directly get the parent branch of a branch in jj?

This is one thing that I constantly find myself wishing was in git but inevitably resign myself to knowing "thats just not how git works."

Re: I see a future in jj

#32

Post by sunshowers »

bagxrvxpepzn wrote: post #30

[flagged]

> There are no substantial technical or usability reasons to switch to JJ from Git [...]. This is a neutral impersonal opinion that is virtually a fact.

I respect your opinion, but I don't think it's a fact and I couldn't disagree any further with it. I wrote a whole testimonial about why I love jj (first one there): https://jj-vcs.github.io/jj/latest/testimonials/#what-the-us...

> it's impractical for most working programmers to switch

I don't know what you mean here. I think it's quite practical to switch to jj, and people switch over all the time. Some people are going to be earlier adopters than others, but the early adopters can bring others along (as I've been lucky to do at Oxide).

> focus on something whose main appeal is more than social

Steve and I both think that Jujutsu's appeal is far more than merely some bandwagon effect. I do think that social appeal is an important part of making a project succeed, and that projects without substantial technical merit win due to social appeal all the time, but Jujutsu has both! It's amazing!

Re: I see a future in jj

#33

Post by adamwk »

I joined the sapling/subversion company this year, but haven’t had the chance to use jj. But given its resemblance I must say sapling has been great. Much more intuitive than git, and I find commit stacks much easier to follow than branches. I do wonder how it will work without the level of support of Meta, since you won’t have the same commit stack review UI (basically a series of pull requests being reviewed at the same time). So something like what this author is working on is needed.

Re: I see a future in jj

#34

Post by dxdm »

kelnos wrote: post #6

At the risk of being unreasonably negative, stuff like this just makes me feel... tired. Git is... fine. I'm sure it doesn't solve every problem for everyone, and oh boy does it still have many rough edges, but it works and (as the article points out), git has won and is widely adopted. I've extensively used CVS and Subversion in the past. I touched Mercurial and Bazaar when I ran into a project that used it. I remem…

I think yours a perfectly reasonable stance, and I often feel the same way. And all this complaining about git is getting tiresome, especially if you had to deal with its predecessors.

FWIW, I still tried out jj and found it a joy to use. I use it all the time now. Most of the time, it not only gets out of your way, but rolls out the red carpet. I'm saying that as someone who knows their way around the git command line. t's like replacing your trusty old remote control with a new one where the buttons are well labeled, ergonomically placed, that lets you do entirely new useful things, and it has a universal back button that just works.

Maybe jj is an especially good fit for my way of working, but I do think that it is a real, actual improvement for everyone.

And it's super easy to pick up anytime. So yeah, I think you're doing it right! Sit back and let it come your way. From what I can see, there's a pretty good chance that it will.

Re: I see a future in jj

#35

Post by simultsop »

steveklabnik wrote: post #3
joshstrange wrote: post #2

I guess I see what the author was trying to convey talking about Rust/Go at the start but I'll admit it confused the hell out of me when we got to Jj (horrible name IMHO but whatever). Jj is a VCS, it was not at all clear (to me) until I got further and I was very confused as to why we were talking so much about source control (I thought Jj was a language since the article started by talking about Rust/Go). Apparentl…

Thank you for the feedback! I talk about it so much I feel like regular readers of my blog will know this stuff already, but I also don't want to leave out important context for others. I tried to help fix this in https://github.com/steveklabnik/steveklabnik.com/pull/125/fi... , thanks again!

If you're asked why Rust. I believe you are always free to choose.

Re: I see a future in jj

#36

Post by mirashii »

bagxrvxpepzn wrote: post #30

[flagged]

> There are no substantial technical or usability reasons to switch to JJ from Git and it's impractical for most working programmers to switch. This is a neutral impersonal opinion that is virtually a fact.

Not a thing in here is true, especially not objectively true. As neutral as you may believe yourself, it might be a good time to step back and reexamine your priors that led you to state so confidently that there’s no usability reason to switch in particular.

Re: I see a future in jj

#38

Post by SoftTalker »

jimbokun wrote: post #17
steveklabnik wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for me, the most compelling thing about jj is that it is somehow simpler than git, while also being more powerful than git. What I mean by simpler is, there's fewer features, which makes things easier to pick up, because these features fit together in a way that's more coherent than git's. By more powerful, I mean jj lets me regularly do things that are possible, but annoying and/or difficult in git. I loved git.…

So better UX while keeping git's solid internals? Makes sense. Developers I know have been wanting that.

Not the only project that's working on that.

https://www.gameoftrees.org/

Re: I see a future in jj

#40

Post by mirashii »

baq wrote: post #24

I’m just sad pijul doesn’t get the same attention or love from the community. It desperately needs an ability to colocate with git.

I think that the ability to collocate with fit is really the thing that makes even evaluating the use of jj feasible in many organizations. To consider pijul, it requires throwing away all of your forge setup, configuration, permissions, backup, disaster recovery, as well as updating every CI pipeline.

In a very real way, git won, and the inertia behind git is higher than it was for any VCS tool before it, and so just being better isn’t going to be enough, you’ll also need to interoperat.

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