On Building Git for Lawyers

I find this excuse depressing. We live in the age of computers. If you don't know how to use one you shouldn't be employed where they're necessary. Rather than making a dumbed down workforce we should be building people's skills up.

Git for normies already exists even MS Word has document versioning. If they cannot be bothered to use the software and technology they need to then they should be unemployed.

Many developers will get a headache when a more complicated git merge/rebase/conflict happens and git is confusing as hell unless you encountered this issue many times before.

As a dev commit/push/pull is trivial, but may God have mercy on the veterinary who needs to do a complex conflict merge across branches.

If most devs are confused then imagine vets.

We also live in the age of architecture. Should everyone who drives over a bridge or work in an office know how those things were constructed and how they are maintained? Should everyone be trained extensively on the infrastructure that gets water to their taps?

That's a rude, tactless thing to say. People in many fields simply don't need more than a cursory knowledge of computers.

For example, I was talking about veterinarians. They need to type records into a web browser, but that's about it.

Veterinarians spend their time learning about things far more valuable to them. For example, which painkillers are safe to use on a cat recovering from surgery, or how to precisely drill into a dog's spinal cord to remove a fluid buildup that's robbed it of the ability to walk, or how to stabilize a dying animal in the emergency room.

These are the least "dumb" people imaginable. They do not need "upskilling" - they went to four years of medical school. They have more important things to do than figure out computer arcana.

> We live in the age of automobiles. If you don't know how to use one you shouldn't be employed where they're necessary. Rather than making a dumbed down workforce we should be building people's skills up.

FTFY ;)

Computers are just another modern convenience. We need to be making them more user friendly and safe. Nobody wants to spend all their time learning, maintaining, and fixing their computers any more than they want to do that with their cars.

They should just work, without surprises.

No, but if you directly use those things for your job, you probably should. For example, if you're a home inspector, you should have decent knowledge about plumbing. Even though you're not a plumber.

If you don't have at least some knowledge, you probably won't be a very good inspector. If you have more knowledge, then you'd be better.

If you require document versioning, you should know, at least a bit, how to use a Version Control Software. You don't need to know the internals, but enough to use it.

I mean... yeah? If you do work using cars daily (delivery driver, cab driver, etc), you should know how to use one. Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

These people clearly do know how to use computers though, they've almost certainly been using them in their professional and personal lives every day for years. They just don't know how to use your preferred tools, and those tools aren't necessary for them.

a home inspector inspects homes. a veterinarian inspects animals. she does not inspect computers.

you could restrict their software movements to the bare essentials for their work and they’d be happier for it. hell, i’m sure most would be happier with no gui if the interface provided them with only what they need. and most need just a place to create a document, type it in, commit the document, view it, and relay it to storage or another user. then a browser to look things up.

but we live in the age of general-purpose computing where people need to use general programs thoroughly unadapted for their specialized jobs, forcing the user to coordinate multiple contexts, which should really be coordinated by the machine. most jobs could be done with nano and sendmail. add an form input field editor and selector and it’s golden. if something else is needed, it should be one command away.

it’s not for them to inspect computers. it’s for devs and enterprises to create software systems such that the tech-naive user would have no need to ever touch anything outside of what they need.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

A veterinarian should also be able to inspect their tools, to some extent. I expect a homebuilder to at least kind of understand how a hammer works.

A computer is a tool. I don't expect them to know everything, but I do expect them to know a little.

As a daily driver of a car, I don't need to know how it works. I know how to _use_ it - get in, turn it on, drive.

Who cares if it's electric or ICE, how combustion or regenerative breaking works, why you need to balance tires, how to change brake pads etc. I take it to the mechanic (IT Department) and they do magic, then give it back to me.

Same for computers. Why does the user need to know about USB 2 vs 3, memory, disk space, multi-threading, ad blockers, etc. Turn it on, use it, and send it out to be fixed when it doesn't work.

Exactly.

Ive started realizing that specialists who lack general skills like computer knowledge o the ability to learn things outside of their domain as needed are themselves tools.

If you can't understand things outside of a very narrow slice of specialization you're just a tool to be used by generalists.

I bet that the maintenance costs on vehicles/computers is inversely proportional to their operators understanding of how they function.

If you hired a driver which would you rather hire, the one who knows which grinding sounds that a vehicle makes are good/bad or the one who just keeps using it with disregard for the grinding sounds because it isn't currently inhibiting their ability to drive?

I'm a big fan of specialization. The vet's should probably learn more tech but I really don't care all that much as long as the cats are healthy.

Building easier tech creates jobs for engineers, and saves the time of the people who are willing to do the stuff that's way harder than engineering.

It probably makes things cheaper for people trying to save their pets too.

Some things are important, everyone should know them. Cooking is important for everyone, sadly comforting the dying eventually is too...

But priorities are also important, and some skills can only be learned by doing. Which is often unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous, and time consuming.

Some stuff has a very low chance of directly being needed. I've never written a paper check. I could probably Google how to balance accounts if I had to.

Vets should have a little more tech skill, but software should be a lot easier.

Yeah, if you can drive your car or put fuel in it and you need to drive for your job... Guess what happens? You don't have a job.

This post is literally about illiteracy of the tools used at your job. They don't need to be experts but if they can't do basics and cannot process new information they should be out on their ass.

Excuses are excuses and shouldn't be tolerated.

This is one of my absolute favorite quotes, and I've used it as a guiding star in figuring out what I want to do with my life, but it's also reductive in a critical way: time and energy are limited, and not everyone wants to generalize.

An example I've been running into myself lately has been trying to get a portrait photography workflow running with only FOSS tech. I've been fighting with darktable and libgphoto for months (and even tried submitting patches!) and tethered shooting still doesn't work right. I could continue sinking time and energy into this, but at the end of the day I just want to shoot tethered to a laptop, a basic function of modern photo editing systems.

I had more time when I was a student for learning how new systems work, but between full time work, the admin of being an adult, maintaining various relationships--I don't have the resources I once did, and I'm content to consider solving them someone else's problem.

The reason I go to my vet is so they can "troubleshoot" my pet. I don't have the expertise to do so myself; why would I expect the reverse to be any more true?

You're abstracting the complexities down to a granularity that strawmans my contention.

If you cannot operate the vehicle you need to do your job you don't have that job. I'm not saying that people need to be experts. I'm saying if you cannot learn the tools needed to do your job then you shouldn't have the job.

The tool they're asking for already exists. That's what I don't get. Document versioning has been part of MS Office for ten years. If they're not using that why would they bother with Git for normies? They're dinosaurs refusing to learn. If they refuse to learn a check box in MS Word why should I trust that they're learning about their specialization?

I shouldn't.

You probably use a cellphone in the course of your work. How much do you know about building and operating a 5G RAN? How about modem and RF front end design?

I assume that if you're not a cellular network engineer, the answer would be "very little".

A tool which is of no use to them in performing their actual job.

They have a workflow that works just fine for them, and if they don't, they already have an abundant market of tools suited to their field that they can just go out and buy if they wish.

he might be grumpy but he's right... there's a lot more workflow optimization especially if you're assuming in 2-3 years every token is gonna generated at some point. that's a new product, its not just github