Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git? • Hacker News Board

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#91

Post by wonnage » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 8:07 PM UTC

envex wrote: post #86

forrestthewoods wrote: post #81

Can we please stop pretending that Git is simple and easy to learn? If that were true then there wouldn't be "Learn how to use Git in minutes!" posts every other day. The fact of the matter is that Git is incredibly powerful but also complex and hard to learn. This isn't a bash on Git at all. It's ok! Sometimes complicated things are just that, complicated. I believe we'll have better guides and tutorials if people s…

Learning everything about git is hard, but learning enough git to use personally isn't that hard. I use git personally to keep backups of my code and deploy sites I work on. I dont' work with other developers so my knowledge of git is workable, but probably super small. Git gets complicated (but probably extremely useful) when working with bigger groups and tons of commits, branches and merges.

I feel like there's not much point in any sort of VCS lesson if it doesn't go over the more complex areas though. For example, reverting commits and resetting to earlier points in history are pretty essential actions, but both have their subtleties in Git (e.g why reverting a merge is hard, what 'reset' vs 'checkout' do) that will bite you if you don't know what you're doing. And everyone's fucked up via git rebase at least once.

If you never need to merge, revert, or in general use any of the aspects of Git that make it special then it's totally reasonable to use something simpler like built-in OS versioning or a conceptually simpler VCS like SVN. But I guess there's no reason why Github would sponsor that, right?

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#92

Post by vgurgov » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 8:11 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #81

Can we please stop pretending that Git is simple and easy to learn? If that were true then there wouldn't be "Learn how to use Git in minutes!" posts every other day. The fact of the matter is that Git is incredibly powerful but also complex and hard to learn. This isn't a bash on Git at all. It's ok! Sometimes complicated things are just that, complicated. I believe we'll have better guides and tutorials if people s…

There are a lot of cases even on bigger SW projects when for some roles(designers, tech writers) just basic git skills would save a lot of nerves to developers.

Designers can fix small things, like images, tweak html a bit etc. They dont need to know how to create/merge new branches etc..

I dont see that Git is trying to pretend that its simple but i can see how that interactive tutorial can be incredible useful to a lot of people.

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#93

Post by fiveseven » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 8:17 PM UTC

tdonaghe wrote: post #66

tsurantino wrote: post #60

Does this straight up just not work for anyone? I am typing in commands and am getting no feedback. Just getting a new $ line.

I'm having the same problem. Other people are complaining about this in their support forums. Doesn't speak too highly of Code School in general.

@tdonaghe - we have fixed all the lag issues (in less than 15m no less). So not sure 20 minutes of sub-optimal experience justifies your comment. Hope you stick around to learn more! :)

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#94

Post by petercooper » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 8:31 PM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #30

NOTE: This is not a rant, I'm just trying to give you a peek into my mind as I tried out this tutorial. I'm doing my best to describe my confusion. I have no clue how to use Git, and I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while. Unfortunately, this is yet another tutorial that is very frustrating even though it's designed to target noobs like myself. So, I added octocat.txt to my staging area. Success! ...…

Anyway, for some reason, everyone who tries to describe Git already has such a strong understanding of it and it's oddities, that they are, for some reason, unable to lay it out properly for a noob IMO.

This is a common problem in teaching, technical writing, and other forms of technical instruction.

Even when a good teacher or writer sets out to deliver material to total beginners, it's very tricky to truly enter the beginner's mindset and cast away a lot of the mental abstractions built up over the years.

I think one way to improve this situation is to focus on results and casually use features and techniques along the way rather than focus on features and techniques and have contrived examples to show off them off. The fewer technical terms or domain specific language you can use up front, the better. (I should note I've been very guilty of the contrived example approach, but this is what it's all about.. experimenting and learning what really works for learners :-))

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#95

Post by etanol » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 8:33 PM UTC

spacemanaki wrote: post #88

mixmastamyk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a false dilemma. Mercurial is here now, is powerful enough for a majority of users, is easy to use, and has an introductory book as well. After reading it and Spolsky's site, I picked it up in a few hours. I think git is a good fit for people who find version control theory interesting, a endeavor in itself, or have complex workflows. For the rest of us, who simply need to work together (sometimes offline…

I specifically wasn't comparing Git to Mercurial, and noted so in my comment, mostly because I don't have any real experience with it. It certainly might be easier to use than Git, I don't actually know. I also don't know how many people who bemoan Git's complexity and learning curve have tried Mercurial, or even used any version control, and how many are migrating from SVN or CVS.

I use them both and I can say that Mercurial is way easier to learn and use than Git. Obviously, Mercurial has less features but, is there currently any DVCS system that has more features than Git?

The funny thing about Mercurial and Git is that they build on top of the same core concepts:

http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/GitConcepts

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#96

Post by EricDeb » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 8:36 PM UTC

As someone who has never used git I found this tutorial relatively acceptable. I was disappointed there was not a level 2!

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#97

Post by adambard » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 8:48 PM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #30

NOTE: This is not a rant, I'm just trying to give you a peek into my mind as I tried out this tutorial. I'm doing my best to describe my confusion. I have no clue how to use Git, and I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while. Unfortunately, this is yet another tutorial that is very frustrating even though it's designed to target noobs like myself. So, I added octocat.txt to my staging area. Success! ...…

Off-topic from the theme of your post, if you really want to learn about git, you could take the path that I did, which was to go by way of Mercurial (otherwise known as hg).

Hg is simpler than git in many ways. There's no "staging" for changes, so "commit" is just taking a snapshot of your files as they are right now. Simple.

And, since it's so simple, that means that you can write a really good tutorial for it, which Joel Spolsky did: http://hginit.com/01.html

Hg is plenty useful in its own right, and it doesn't really deserve to be training wheels for git as I've presented it here. But moving from hg to git is really easy; it makes git just seem like hg with a bunch more features.

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#98

Post by kalid » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:03 PM UTC

rajat wrote: post #56

dpcan wrote: post #30

NOTE: This is not a rant, I'm just trying to give you a peek into my mind as I tried out this tutorial. I'm doing my best to describe my confusion. I have no clue how to use Git, and I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while. Unfortunately, this is yet another tutorial that is very frustrating even though it's designed to target noobs like myself. So, I added octocat.txt to my staging area. Success! ...…

I sympathize. What is really necessary are not tutorials on how to use Git--it isn't that hard, after all, for most of us--but more of a description of actual workflow. Not HOW you issue Git commands; but how to use Git. It would be interesting to read articles about how a single programmer uses Git, how a small programming team, how a distributed team uses Git. Similar articles about how a team producing art, or tex…

I completely agree. If it helps, I wrote up some visual tutorials about version control in general that many have found helpful:

http://betterexplained.com/articles/intro-to-distributed-ver...

The idea is to build a mental model about what is possible vs. memorizing a bunch of specific commands. Once I wrapped my head around the concepts, the commands fell into place.

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#99

Post by raygunomical » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:05 PM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #30

NOTE: This is not a rant, I'm just trying to give you a peek into my mind as I tried out this tutorial. I'm doing my best to describe my confusion. I have no clue how to use Git, and I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while. Unfortunately, this is yet another tutorial that is very frustrating even though it's designed to target noobs like myself. So, I added octocat.txt to my staging area. Success! ...…

It's pretty clear that this tutorial expects you to already have some experience with concepts in revision control. However, the problem is that if you're already experienced in revision control, you would probably find this tutorial a little simplistic and condescending.

Basically, git has a steep learning curve and people haven't found a good way to flatten it out a bit.

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#100

Post by amix » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #81

Can we please stop pretending that Git is simple and easy to learn? If that were true then there wouldn't be "Learn how to use Git in minutes!" posts every other day. The fact of the matter is that Git is incredibly powerful but also complex and hard to learn. This isn't a bash on Git at all. It's ok! Sometimes complicated things are just that, complicated. I believe we'll have better guides and tutorials if people s…

I haven't read any books or longer tutorials on Git. I find it easy to use and if I run into trouble I just Google after help (which happens a few times a week). Throughout the day I mostly use 9 Git commands. Here are the top 9 commands I use:

    git checkout X
    git checkout -b new-branch
    git commit
    git add; git mv; git rm; 
    git pull --rebase
    git rebase origin/master
    git push origin X

I have used this for a long time without running into huge amounts of trouble (and if I need to revert back to a specific or do anything special I can always consult Google). The bottom line is: For simple cases Git is really simple to use and to learn. You don't need to become a Git master to use Git.

The problem is that people introduce the powerful features of Git that only a few percentage of people will ever use.