Re: [doc] User Manual Suggestion
- From
Johan Herland <johan@herland.net>
- Date
- Apr 24, 2009, 20:30 UTC
- Message-ID
- <200904242230.13239.johan@herland.net>
- In-Reply-To
- <b4087cc50904231730i1e8a005cpaf1921e23df11da6@mail.gmail.com>
On Friday 24 April 2009, Michael Witten wrote:
Show 7 quoted lines
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 17:51, Johan Herland <johan@herland.net> wrote: > > There's also http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/technical/git/ which I > > think is a great bottom-up introduction: > > - not too heavy on the concepts > > I really don't understand this mentality. Concepts are the only things > that are important. From concepts falls all else.
Sorry for not being clear: Concepts are indeed (and should be) important. What I mean is that the concepts introduced are short and simple enough for novice users to understand (without much VCS experience, if any at all). If we start off _too_ detailed, we risk loosing the audience, and no one is better off.
Like Jeff King said elsewhere in this thread: We want to start a little higher from the bottom. The above introduction does not focus on blobs or trees, but manages to introduce Git in a useful manner by starting off with only two concepts: commits and refs. With only these two concepts, and showing how high-level commands (remember: no plumbing) work with these concepts, I believe it is possible to teach anyone to use Git well. Of course, as users progress towards becoming power-users, more concepts are needed, but I don't think these are needed from the start.
As Einstein might have said: As simple as possible, but no simpler.
Have fun!
...Johan
-- Johan Herland, <johan@herland.net> www.herland.net