Re: Undo last commit?

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 30, 2011, 04:50 UTC
Message-ID: <BANLkTim459-Jx2R9GpBdkck7PMAEbamJeA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTimZN4swfY13zMjkCbAc9UsGSix02Q@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Mike,

Mike writes:

Show 15 quoted lines

> I do think that git needs polishing in this way. It was designed by a
> very intelligent programmer... however they can sometimes be the worst
> at user interface design. I think a lot of people are missing out on
> how great git is because of the learning curve, and also the slightly
> odd naming conventions.
>
> "git reset --soft HEAD^" can't be picked up that quickly by a
> beginner, but git uncommit would be obvious! So I have to agree with
> Holger. Good design makes something intuitive. I have used DVD
> recorder / players that are so badly designed that I needed to read
> the instruction manual. Something complicated can be designed to such
> a degree that people rarely have to read a manual, and they can pick
> it up really quickly because it's obvious. If you disagree then you
> might need to learn something about good design because what I say
> isn't opinion it's a fact. Flame away :)

I completely agree with you. Git's user interface can certainly be improved -- we have had many many discussions on this topic (like {1]). Unfortunately, the way to go about doing it is not to implement every little suggestion and introduce more inconsistencies; Git is very complex, and changing one little thing requires us to think about how it'll affect everything else. Yes, it does seem like a daunting task, but the interface IS improving slowly and steadily. You can help by thinking about how a certain new feature will interact with every component of Git, and participating in UI discussions.

-- Ram

[1]: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/175061