[perl4ever]

I'm not sure what the answer is for version control, but I refuse to accept it's Git. I don't understand how it became so popular - did nobody say "wait, there might be a reason why Linus is known for cloning an OS and not coming up with a brilliant design for one from scratch?"

[benbristow]

Git is great. Lightweight, scales effortlessly, learning curve isn’t too bad, decentralised by design and because it’s so widely adopted it works pretty much everywhere.

What else are you gonna use? SVN? shudder

[perl4ever]

The learning curve isn't too bad? Do you actually use Git? Like, from the command line?

I have no issue with a friendly wrapper in general, but after starting with the basic interface, I don't trust a wrapper to be logical, complete, and well thought out, given the foundation.

[benbristow]

Yes, I use Git mainly from the command line and I've used it on Linux, OSX and Windows. I've also used quite a few GUIs including SourceTree, Github Desktop and GitKraken. I've been using it for a while now!

In the end it really boils down to a few commands that you use often, checkout/push/pull/commit/clone/branch/diff/status etc. It can definitely get confusing at times when you get merge conflicts and want to start playing with rebasing and stuff like that.

I've used it with teams with no experience with Git whatsoever and they're usually fluent at the basics within a week or so.

If you get stuck the command you need is usually a 2 minute Google away.

There's also this which is fantastically named! https://ohshitgit.com

[bmn__]

> I don't understand how it became so popular

Git follows in spirit the model of BitKeeper, a software that already worked exceptionally well for Linus and other kernel devs. So Git had both a known good design from the very beginning and a decently sized installed user base (kernel devs) with an important project (the kernel).

IMO there's nothing wrong with the cloning of software. You make it sound bad, can you give reasons?

[misterdoubt]

OK.