Re: Command-line git Vs IDE+plugin?

From: Philippe Vaucher <philippe.vaucher@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 18, 2013, 17:42 UTC
Message-ID: <CAGK7Mr7EpkE3mL2p9idNr7HdnBNxqiQ8qWs+QuyhR9DvW=Pd1A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpqiovpfxd1.fsf@anie.imag.fr>

> I'm normally an Emacs+command-line user, but I also use Eclipse or
> Netbeans on some projects.

Did you give magit a try? It's really an awesome emacs plugin, which gives me pretty much the same control as the command line experience without the pain. Ask me more about if if you're interested.

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> I was wondering whether others had similar (or not) experience. In
> particular, as a teacher, I'm wondering whether I should push my
> students towards the GUI in the IDE, or advise them to keep using the
> command-line (we teach them git with the command-line first anyway, but
> after a year of practice, we may want to show them the GUI equivalent).

In my experience, most people prefer the GUI version, simply because to them it's more intuitive and stuffs like visual diffs tools are integrated, which makes them quickly realise the benefits. That said, because it's "easier" they tend to not dig deeper and are lost at the first little problem, e.g a simple conflict becomes difficult to solve.

In my opinion to *learn* git it's useful to learn with the console first, just like when you learn C++ it's useful to start with simple exercises and not jump straight to GUI programming. When they become familiar with the basics, I think it's nice to show them about `git log --graph --all --decorate` and the gitk/gitg equivalent, or "git diff" and the vimdiff/ediff/visual merge/kdiff equivalent.

When they understand git reasonably (or if they are not lazy people and willing to learn), then show them full integrations like TortoiseGit (or probably the Netbeans plugin), which are nice when everything works but you have to know console git to fix things or simply to be aware of their limitations.

TL;DR, I think both are necessary, the command line to understand git and the integrations/wrappers to add sugar to your daily workflow. Visual tools are great, especially visual diffs for merging.

Philippe