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Beej's Guide to Git

(beej.us)
1062 points mixto | 1 comments | 05 Feb 25 00:07 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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dijit ◴[05 Feb 25 00:42 UTC] No.42941702[source]▶
Well, what's terrifying is that the guide is so long.

I am aware that beej's guides are typically quite comprehensive, but the vast nuances of git truly eluded me until this.

I guess Jujitsu would wind up being a much slimmer guide, or at least one that would be discoverable largely by humans?

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vvpan ◴[05 Feb 25 01:19 UTC] No.42942124[source]▶
It tells me that git is the wrong tool for the majority of people but it just happened to stick.
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stephen_g ◴[05 Feb 25 01:32 UTC] No.42942293[source]▶
I think it's probably the opposite, Git has amassed a lot of complexity because it's been adapted to being a tool that is able to can satisfy the majority of requirements.

I've never found that I need to touch most of it in the 15 or so years I've been using it, but it's there if your project needs it.

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crabbone ◴[05 Feb 25 07:18 UTC] No.42945028[source]▶
Nope. It was initially built for the use-case most people will never have: multiple remotes that work on a project with multiple similar products each with its own set of differences from the others, with emphasis and dependency on Unix tools and text-only emails.

Most Git users will never have more than one remote per project, and so will only have a single product built from their source code. Probably wouldn't even know how to configure their mua to send text-only emails, in case that option is even available to them, and would struggle with basic Unix utilities like Vim and diff.

I don't know why Git won the VCS contest. But, I'm afraid, as with many such wins, there wasn't a clear rational reason why it should have won. It didn't make some of the obvious bad decisions which would disqualify it, but so did a few others. My take on this is that communication tools naturally gravitate towards monopoly, so, if one starts to win even slightly, the win will become a landslide win.

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1. stcroixx ◴[05 Feb 25 13:32 UTC] No.42948214[source]▶
Spot on. I think it won because of who created it. I love linux and have been a daily user for like 25 years, but that doesn't mean I'm going to have a positive bias towards new tools or projects Linus makes like git. I think had some no name developed this it would have been laughed at by the majority of devs because, as you say, it's target use case is very specific and rare making it the wrong tool for most of us. Might have the worst interface I've ever seen. Before using it, I spent close to zero time thinking about version control and didn't need to understand anything about it's internals and had zero problems in the software dev lifecycle. Now, people are proud to waste time learning implementation details of their version control tool?