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0 pointsams611010y ago0 comments

Disclosure up front, I don't really use git myself. I have tried it and found it to be too confusing. I liked svn and these days use hg. I also tend to work on mostly solo and small projects.

However in my observation I have found that more than any other revision control system I have used, the person ultimately responsible for the code spends far more time cleaning up history and recovering from developer mistakes on projects using git than any I can recall, and that goes back to CVS and Visual Source Safe, also including svn and hg.

I know a lot of people use git and love it so I'm prepared to accept that they're all smarter than I am. But IMHO, the version control system should be incidental to my work. It should not demand any significant fraction of my brainpower: that should be devoted to the code I'm working on. If I have to stop and THINK about the VCS every time I use it, or if it gives me some obscure "PC LOAD LETTER" type of response (which seems to happen to me when I use git) then it is a net negative. If I need to have a flowchart on my wall or keep some concept of a digraph in the front of my thinking or use a cheat sheet to work with the VCS, then it's just one more thing that gets in my way.

I think git probably has a place on very large codebases, with very distributed developers. For the typical case of a few developers who all work in the same office, I think in most cases it's overkill and people would be more productive using something simpler.

0 comments

Mithaldu10y ago

> If I have to stop and THINK about the VCS every time I use it, or if it gives me some obscure "PC LOAD LETTER" type of response

I'm sorry, there is no kind way to say this without spending too much time i don't have.

You're making the same kind of argument i am hearing from older people in my family about newer hardware (tvs, phones, etc.). You see an initial learning curve and falsely assume that this curve will never flatten out and give way to easy and intuitive access to power.

stickfigure10y ago

I've been using git for years and consider myself a fairly sophisticated git user, with a reasonably solid conceptual understanding of what goes on under the covers. I've even performed significant surgery on the jgit codebase (converting it to SHA256 for a security-related project - what a mess).

And yet I don't feel that the learning curve flattens out. I still end up getting wedged into states that send me scrambling for stackoverflow.

Git is incredibly powerful, which is why I use it. But the PC LOAD LETTER comment resonates strongly with me. We can embrace a tool while also acknowledging its faults.

recursive10y ago

I've spent more time learning git than I have spent learning all other VCS combined, of which there have been at least a few in my history. My mastery of git is significantly less than that of any other VCS I've used. Less powerful VCS are easier to use, and that can be a feature.

ams6110OP10y ago

spending too much time i don't have

And yet here you are commenting on HN.

Well, I am older, actually. Maybe it's just part of what happens. I still miss my flip phone too. So much simpler....

Mithaldu10y ago

> And yet here you are commenting on HN.

In other words: I was close to leaving my upvote and walking away, but decided to not leave you wondering, since you DID spend some effort and thought in your post.

> Well, I am older, actually. Maybe it's just part of what happens. I still miss my flip phone too. So much simpler....

It's actually what happens. I'm feeling the same way about various things as i'm getting older. I can't be arsed to figure out what Docker is, for example. Ain't nobody got time for that. Otoh, i do realize that's just me and it's probably a great thing that i hope the sysadmins i work with will know to pick up and make use of its potential.

barrkel10y ago

FWIW, I've spent far more time thinking about svn than I ever spent thinking about git.

Specifically, porting changes between multiple branches in svn was a nightmare. E.g. if you have three different branches (two releases and a develop), and you need to make the same bugfix on all of them - extremely unpleasant. I ended up writing my own diff/patch management system to keep track of bug fix patches, so that I could reapply them at will on other branches.

Git instantly made sense to me. It incorporated how I already thought about repositories and diffs. The DAG structure made sense. Merging made sense; rebasing made sense; everything made sense, almost instantly.

Joeri10y ago

My two cents is that i haven't found it difficult to merge between branches myself. I'll open up a diff view of the commit(s) i want to merge, and then merge them branch-to-branch and file-to-file using a two-way merge tool, using the diff as a guide.

adekok10y ago

> Disclosure up front, I don't really use git myself. I have tried it and found it to be too confusing. I liked svn

Oh dear, that's bad.

> and these days use hg.

That's better.

> I also tend to work on mostly solo and small projects.

Ah. You probably don't need git then.

I've used a number of systems (RCS, CVS, SCCS, svn, monotone, hg, git). Of them all, hg was the simplest to use. Git was the most powerful.

Everything else listed above is terrible for multiple developers.

But solo developers? "tar" is a reasonable system for small projects. By that standard, SVN is fine, too.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsams611010y ago0 comments

Disclosure up front, I don't really use git myself. I have tried it and found it to be too confusing. I liked svn and these days use hg. I also tend to work on mostly solo and small projects.

0 comments

Mithaldu10y ago

> If I have to stop and THINK about the VCS every time I use it, or if it gives me some obscure "PC LOAD LETTER" type of response

I'm sorry, there is no kind way to say this without spending too much time i don't have.

stickfigure10y ago

And yet I don't feel that the learning curve flattens out. I still end up getting wedged into states that send me scrambling for stackoverflow.

Git is incredibly powerful, which is why I use it. But the PC LOAD LETTER comment resonates strongly with me. We can embrace a tool while also acknowledging its faults.

recursive10y ago

ams6110OP10y ago

spending too much time i don't have

And yet here you are commenting on HN.

Well, I am older, actually. Maybe it's just part of what happens. I still miss my flip phone too. So much simpler....

Mithaldu10y ago

> And yet here you are commenting on HN.

In other words: I was close to leaving my upvote and walking away, but decided to not leave you wondering, since you DID spend some effort and thought in your post.

> Well, I am older, actually. Maybe it's just part of what happens. I still miss my flip phone too. So much simpler....

barrkel10y ago

FWIW, I've spent far more time thinking about svn than I ever spent thinking about git.

Joeri10y ago

adekok10y ago

> Disclosure up front, I don't really use git myself. I have tried it and found it to be too confusing. I liked svn

Oh dear, that's bad.

> and these days use hg.

That's better.

> I also tend to work on mostly solo and small projects.

Ah. You probably don't need git then.

I've used a number of systems (RCS, CVS, SCCS, svn, monotone, hg, git). Of them all, hg was the simplest to use. Git was the most powerful.

Everything else listed above is terrible for multiple developers.

But solo developers? "tar" is a reasonable system for small projects. By that standard, SVN is fine, too.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse