Re: Request to remove Junio C Hamano as the Git Maintainer

From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Date: Dec 31, 2022, 19:19 UTC
Message-ID: <Y7CLVESLXqy1ZLCn@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <7hfRSnKTRnT4uJh5Pok8U8gfLm_NXzCS6w_7_Rc9OH3a9Lv8hpjySZqxDglBFC-fTOdZHi-ODCihiEHlQD9nIhUmld5jYvRx_JvB0z2IAL0=@164.ooo>

On Sat, Dec 31, 2022 at 06:11:17PM +0000, Filip Lipien wrote:

> There are more than one million questions on Stackoverflow related to the usage of Git.
> This is not normal.

Incorrect. As of this writing, there are 146,090 quetions[1] tagged [git] on stackoverflow. Compare that to the 161,963 questions[2] tagged [windows], or the 2,084,537 questions[3] tagged [python].

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git [2] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/windows [3] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python

The fact that there are a large number of questions in stackoverflow is more a measure of a tool's popularity than anything else. And if it's popular, it's probably because a large number of developers have found it to be *useful*.

> Git is in its current state not a tool that's made for humans.

It's made for developers like me, and last I checked, I'm human. :-) It may not be made for you, but that's OK; you don't have to use it.

My personal opinion is that it has probably *saved* a net total of billions of dollars of developer time, for those who know how to use it.

Best regards,

						- Ted

P.S. I would commend to you Neal Stephenson's essay, "In the beginning was the command line". It was available for sale as a book, but as it was published a while back in 1999, it's since been made available for free download[4]. Unfortunately, because it was so popular, the resulting download traffic crashed his publisher's website, and it's no longer available there. The best place to get it is here[5].

[4] https://www.nealstephenson.com/in-the-beginning-was-the-command-line.html [5] https://github.com/danielmkarlsson/library/blob/master/Neal%20Stephenson%20-%20In%20the%20Beginning%20was%20the%20Command%20Line.pdf

It's a short read; only 60 pages in the PDF. About midway through the essay, in section 11, there is a comparison made between Linux and the Hole Hawg, an industrial drill made by the Milwaukee Tool Company. If Linux is the Hole Hawg of Operating Systems, then perhaps git is the Hole Hawg of Source Code Management systems. If it's too much SCM for you; there's no shame --- you can always choose to use lesser SCM's for your own personal projects. :-)