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Git Notes: Git's coolest, most unloved­ feature (2022)

(tylercipriani.com)
577 points Delgan | 1 comments | 22 Jun 25 09:14 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ozim ◴[22 Jun 25 21:55 UTC] No.44350631[source]▶
It is not coolest most unloved feature. It is a gimmick feature that could have been cool in some really specific cases like team of only developers running the whole company.

Whatever is needed goes into commit message and referencing tickets in separate system is a feature not a bug - because JIRA or any other system is used to communicate with non developers. Like business analysts don't get access to code or repositories at all for example or support people don't get access to the repositories and code.

Yeah I can see how one could write front end to get the notes visible/editable by non developers but it still does not make any sense because BA/Support others don't care about specific commits and a single feature might fit into a commit but most likely does not. Even more fun is when you have multi repo and your feature touches couple services then git notes are quite useless because then you really need reference to outside system.

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stopthe ◴[22 Jun 25 22:27 UTC] No.44350820[source]▶
> business analysts don't get access to code or repositories at all for example or support people don't get access to the repositories and code.

Yes, but isn't it insane? What is the benefit from treating your own product as a black box? Yet that's mainstream. Sometimes I have the analyst (not on my team, but from a team we share a monorepo with) asking me questions that can be answered literally with a line of code. And she's a technical kind, knows SQL and such. And we write very idiomatic, high level code. But still, culture cannot change itself until it dies due to inherent inefficiency.

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ozim ◴[23 Jun 25 21:05 UTC] No.44360075[source]▶
I think you underestimate inefficiency of requiring all business analysts and employees to learn GIT. If not all employees than more employees. I can pick put up job ad for BA saying knows JIRA and I have dozens of applicants.

We had a technical guy once where I worked that wanted to force sales guys to use LaTex to write documentation and requirements in and store it in GIT. I feel bad for the guy as he was laughed out by sales guys and he did not understood why because those are such a great tools…

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1. stopthe ◴[27 Jun 25 15:00 UTC] No.44397296[source]▶
OTH the inefficiency of an analyst who cannot answer even basic questions about the current state of the product without developers' help. Distracting them, or even worse - blocking until a dev is available.

I think it boils down to the power of balance in the org. Likewise I've met developers who cannot book a meeting. Some people have privilege to choose what to learn and what to laugh at. Actually, I'm surprised your sales guys wrote any documentation at all:)