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0 pointsanigbrowl9d ago0 comments

Respectfully, I think you're missing the point. The GP is not asking for an explanation (and could look that up from the Git docs) but commenting on how user-hostile it is. There's lots of software like this, which is so unfriendly that once you've learned the minimum of how to do something and verify it worked, you don't want to touch it any more unless you really need to.

CLI output should be in plain language and omit or minimize unnecessary detail absent a -verbose flag - for example, I'm just not interested in how many threads something took unless I'm working on it. As a user, I want to be focused on the task I'm doing, not on the perfromance of the tool.

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5 comments · 2 top-level

Melatonic9d ago· 3 in thread

I dont think the problem is even verbosity here - it really isnt that much text.

The issue is what you and the above points out - it is not easy to read.

What might help dramatically is a simple modification of text (the verbose stuff could be slightly light grey and the important bits fully highlighted white) or even go full IRC with colored text, bold, etc.

Or hell - maybe instead they add a switch that inserts "//comment" like additionally lines to explain what is going on (succinctly) to the average Power User type. The default could be "software engineer" mode and the switch enable "Git for Dummies" mode.

9dev9d ago

and why don't we just follow decades of conventions and add a --verbose/-v flag to display all the gobbledegook if you really want to, but hide it by default? As far as I remember, the guidance has always been "only print something if the user needs to know, no output means success."

git would be perfectly usable without knowing how many objects it has pushed or how fast it was doing so.

genocidicbunny9d ago

That is exactly what one of my earliest CS teachers taught me.

No news is good news.

17186274409d ago

Because it is a progress indicator, that you stare at while waiting. Even Youtube does that and that is written for the general population.

wtetzner8d ago

I'm struggling to understand how this output is a problem. There a whole bunch of things that make git user-unfriendly, but I don't think this is one of them.

I think it's disingenuous to suggest that the `git push` output is somehow adding friction to users. Do you really think that even non-programmer users won't just read it as "it's still doing stuff"? Sure, you could hide it behind a --verbose flag, but then if it fails half way through, it's too late to add the flag. Even a user who doesn't understand the output could then copy/paste it into Google or an LLM to figure out what happened.

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