Re: [PATCH/RFC] builtin-checkout: suggest creating local branch when appropriate to do so

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Oct 13, 2009, 23:16 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0910140108110.4985@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>
In-Reply-To: <7vhbu2syi6.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Hi,

On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 05:31:46PM -0400, Daniel Barkalow wrote:
> >
> >> I personally think that the real issue is that our "detached HEAD" message 
> >> is still too scary, and what we really want is to issue the scary message 
> >> when using "git commit" to move a detached HEAD from what was checked out 
> >> to a new commit.
> >
> > This has been discussed before (I happen to agree with you, but you
> > probably want to address other comments in the thread):
> >
> >   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/38201/focus=38213
> 
> I just re-read the discussion again (thanks for a useful pointers).  I
> mostly agree with everything said in the thread and obviously agree with
> its conclusion, but one thing I noticed that everybody (who _was_ a git
> expert) in the thread was assuming bothered me somewhat.

We can of course continue to this public wanking session in our nice little circle here on git@vger, fully aware that real users will not dare to interrupt us.

In the alternative, we can go out into the world (you know, that thing behind the computer screen?) and ask somebody who has _not_ been exposed to Git for _4 years_ (like most of you!) just how hard it is to work with Git.

Let me tell you this from my experience: the least likely answer is "the messages are too scary". Invariably, the answer I get is "it is totally unintuitive". Often followed by "I tell Git to do something straight-forward, and it refuses to do it."

Maybe we should just admit that we are no user interface designers, so one cannot expect miracles from us in that respect. And first and foremost, we should not pretend to ourselves that we are good at user interfaces, because we have a track record of sucking in that area. Big time.

Ciao, Dscho

P.S.: As somebody mentioned already, it is time to fix the tools, not our users.