Jujutsu for everyone

> Jujutsu is more powerful than Git. Despite the fact that it's easier to learn and more intuitive, it actually has loads of awesome capabilities for power users that completely leave Git in the dust.

Like? This isn't explained, I'm curious on why I would want to use it, but this is just an empty platitude, doesn't really give me a reason to try.

Hi, author here. Since the target audience is people with little to no Git experience, a detailed comparison would not make sense. I did simply make that claim because the weirdness of Git's UI is usually justified by saying how powerful it is. So this statement is just intended to ease the readers mind that they're not missing out on power by choosing a tool that's easier to learn.

I appreciate this perspective.

IMO, the authors and evangelists of Git are essentially correct when they argue about its power.

However, I think that it's extremely difficult to gain practical experience with using Git in a high-powered, high-agency way, mostly because there are a lot of abstract concepts at play and there is no easily accessible place where these concepts can be "discovered".

Basically, Git is as good as it's cracked up to be, but only if you're an expert.

If you're interested in becoming a Git expert, I cannot recommend Emacs Magit strongly enough.

If not, I think Jujutsu could be an quicker road to a high-agency version control workflow. It's at least worth considering. I feel confident that Jujutsu can succeed, in particular because of Git's harsh difficulty curve.

Thanks, but I consider myself a Git expert already :-) I read the Pro Git book cover to cover. I have a gluten-free, artisanal, free-range git config that I've grown and cared for over years. single character aliases all the important commands, "log all graph oneline", "commit amend no-edit", interactive rebase (ofc. with autosquash, autostash, updaterefs and rebasemerges), reset hard, push force-with-lease... Also: commit signing, url rewriting, conditional configs for different orgs, all that jazz. I was super productive with it and loved it.

And then Jujutsu came along and casually doubled my VCS productivity. I didn't see it coming!

Is there a particular pain point (or set of pain points) that you have using git which is removed when you use Jujutsu?

I am interested to know, because there seem to be a small number of people who really seem to like it, and up to this point I haven't been able to understand what it is that they are all so excited about.

For me, it's two things:

1. I understood git better after ten minutes of jj than after fifteen years of git. Git just doesn't expose its underlying data model as well as jj does. I guess, if you already know git well, this isn't going to make a difference for you.

2. This question is a bit like asking what can I do with a calculator that I can't do with pen and paper? Technically, nothing, but everything will be so much easier that you'll be much more likely to use it. Even though I can, technically, stash my worktree and jump to another commit with git, it's so fiddly to unstash (especially with multiple stacked switches/stashes) that I just never did it.

With jj, I leave commits in the middle and jump to other commits (to fix a bug or make a small change I noticed I need while working on a larger change) all the time, because there's zero friction.

jj just removes all the friction that's prevalent in git. Things are easy in jj that in git are merely possible.

> With jj, I leave commits in the middle and jump to other commits (to fix a bug or make a small change I noticed I need while working on a larger change) all the time, because there's zero friction.

For git users who are wondering "What friction? I just git stash and jump to another branch":

In jj, you just jump without needing to type any command like git stash.

git stash is not that simple. you'd need to remember what branch that stash applies to to get back to where you were.

I'm new to jj. I'm still mixed on if I like it not. I think it's mostly familiarity. For example, switching to a commit puts things in the state before the files were committed. All my projects have a presumit step that says "hey! commit your files!" so they are all incompatible with jj at the moment or at leas the default. I end up having to do temp stuff like `jj new` (ok, now they're committed). Now run my presubmit scripts. Then `jj undo` so I don't have this unneeded commit. That said, I'm sure there's a better way, I just haven't gotten used jj yet.

Others have said this, `jj undo` and `jj op restore` have been lifesavers though. No matter what I do I can get back to where I was before I messed up.