Re: master^ is not a local branch -- huh?!?

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@fluxnic.net>
Date: Jan 30, 2010, 03:15 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.1001292122050.1681@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.1001300312450.3749@intel-tinevez-2-302>

On Sat, 30 Jan 2010, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, 29 Jan 2010, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> 
> > With all due respects, I don't share Dscho's sentiment about Git's 
> > alleged non user-friendliness.
> 
> Of course you don't.  You are a Git oldtimer.  Probably you do not even 
> have much exposure to complete programming newbies.

Welllll... That depends.

If you mean people who, despite a CS degree, are still unable to figure out if some loop exit condition should be > or >= except by testing the compiled code and see if a crash occurs, then yes I do feel the pain of being exposed to such people way too often for my taste. And frankly I just don't care if those people can't grok the Git UI.

Git is meant to be a tool for people performing a minimum of development tasks. If those people can't grasp the Git UI and concepts with little effort then they're either 1) uninterested or 2) incompetent. For the uninterested people there are GUIs out there. And don't get me started on the incompetent ones.

And for the rest of the world, such as my boss, there is gitweb.

> Well, guess what.  I have.  And guess what even more: they are the 
> majority, not you and me.

Did you ever got them to use P4? I'm convinced that learning how to use P4 for a Git user is way more painful than a P4 user to learn Git. Similarly for Arch or many other alternatives.

HG looks easier? Sure. But it isn't exactly as flexible and powerful as Git is though. You prefer a less powerful but simpler tool? OK just go with HG then -- I have no problem with that. Even SVN might be just what you need. But if you prefer the power of Git then there is a price to pay for it. Making Git simpler would inevitably reduces its power.

I hope newbies won't stay newbies all their life. If the majority of all the people are newbies then no need to wonder why there is so much crap being produced by the computing industry then. Learning isn't only a nasty thing that they force you to do at school and which you get over with once you escape from there.

Incidentally we've been getting more positive feedback than negative ones about Git from newbies on this list lately. That might be because our UI, although still not perfect, improved quite a bit, and most probably because the documentation surrounding Git has improved tremendously too.

Nicolas