From: Johan Herland Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:30:12 GMT Subject: Re: [doc] User Manual Suggestion Message-ID: <200904242230.13239.johan@herland.net> In-Reply-To: On Friday 24 April 2009, Michael Witten wrote: > On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 17:51, Johan Herland 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, www.herland.net