Re: [PATCH] git-reset.txt: Use commit~1 notation over commit^

From: Kevin Ballard <kevin@sb.org>
Date: Dec 1, 2010, 22:56 UTC
Message-ID: <F13BED73-8C90-46D9-8AC9-054EF24DC688@sb.org>
In-Reply-To: <87ipzdt8gb.fsf@picasso.cante.net>

On Dec 1, 2010, at 2:49 PM, Jari Aalto wrote:

> Whatever you feel. Consistency is important viewpoint. Try explaining to
> a group of people these two variations. The make them write scripts to
> use git commands. Guess which notation they choose? The "^" isnt' even
> scriptable.

What do you mean? I've personally taught nearly everybody at my office how to use git, and every single one of them uses ^ when they want to go to the previous commit and ~n when they want to go n commits back (where n > 1). Even the few people who knew git before I talked to them use this convention. And guess where those people learned it? By seeing the different syntaxes in the manpage. Even for the people I taught, I never told them expressly to use HEAD^ vs HEAD~3, but through the combination of my examples and the examples in the manpages, they all understood both operators and how to use them without any difficulty whatsoever.

You stated that you have "witnessed close hand for thousands of learners." And you state that these people don't understand this sort of documentation. I don't mean to give offense, but have you ever considered what the common element here is?

-Kevin Ballard