His main contributions were his ideas.
1) The distributed model, that doesn’t need to dial the internet.
2) The core data structures. For instance, how git stores snapshots for files changes in a commit. Other tools used diff approaches which made rewinding, branch switching, and diffing super slow.
Those two ideas are important and influenced git deeply, but he didn’t code the thing, and definitely not in 7 days!
https://graphite.com/blog/bitkeeper-linux-story-of-git-creat...
You may find this 10-year-old thread on HN enlightening, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11667494
Linus’s contribution is a great one. He learned from prior tools and contributions, made a lot of smart technical decisions, got stuff moving with a prototype, then displayed good technical leadership by handing it off to a dedicated development team.
That’s such a good lesson for all of us devs.
So why the urge to lie and pretend he coded it in a week with no help? I know you’re not saying this, but this is the common myth.
In reality, it was a collaborative effort between multiple smart people who poured months and years of sweat into the thing.
I seem to agree with you. The real story is a good thing and Linus made important contributions!
But he didn’t create git by himself in a week like the parent comments argue.
Git is decades old. Of course, there are tons of contributions after the first 10 days. Everyone knows that.
He started it and built the first working version.
The parent comments are arguing that 17million for git 2.0 is insane because Linux wrote the original in a week.
Except that’s not true. He sketched out a proof of concept in a week. Then handed it off to a team of maintainers who worked on it for the next two decades.
It’s also not pedantic because Linus himself makes this distinction. He doesn’t say he coded Git and specifically corrects people in interviews when they this.
On the ninth he roasted some fool.
