# Re: git and time 2 messages from 2006-09-28 to 2006-09-28. Participants: apodtele, Linus Torvalds. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/5728 ## apodtele, 2006-09-28 00:49 Subject: Re: git and time Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/d620685f0609271749p30da81d6p25cb759bf793d327%40mail.gmail.com ``` Shall we summarize? Time is a very important concept in physics. Yet time is pretty much useless in math and git for that matter. GIT == Git Ignores Time ``` ## Linus Torvalds, 2006-09-28 16:53 Subject: Re: git and time Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/Pine.LNX.4.64.0609280949030.3952%40g5.osdl.org In-Reply-To: ``` On Wed, 27 Sep 2006, apodtele wrote: > > Shall we summarize? Time is a very important concept in physics. Actually, even in physics (or very _much_ in physics), time doesn't follow the nice procession that Matthew is kind of asking for. In physics, particles can go backwards in time or forwards in time (the _likelihood_ that a photon moves at exactly the speed of light is higher, but on a quantum scale, strange things happen). And everybody should by now know what relativity says: time does not impose an "ordering" of events outside of the so-called "cone of light". There is only an ordering imposed by _causality_, not by time. That, btw, is very similar to git. The only _true_ ordering in git is causality. Time itself tends to have certain properties that makes it _look_ like it is about causality, but in real life there is just a strong correlation. Nature is sometimes stranger than our everyday experiences would have us believe. And "time" is a hell of a lot more complicated than just a global one-dimensional entity, steadily ticking away. Linus ```