[rapjr9]

I worked on computer science projects for 20 years. At first we had no source management, everyone did whatever they wanted. Then we used CMS, and we occasionally stepped on each others toes but things were better. Then we switched to SVN and nothing much changed except we established a way to hold locks on files while they were being changed. Then we switched to git because the students wanted to learn the cool thing. We started having meetings to teach people git. Meetings about the best way to use git. Meetings to deal with common problems in our use of git. Productivity dropped because everyone now had to deal with git problems. It made my life hell because usually I just wanted to check in my code so it would not get lost, but instead I would continually get forced into reconciling git issues. I would have to resolve issues to get my code checked in because other people had changed something entirely unrelated to my work. I stopped using git and kept my own backups and only checked in code very occasionally so I could get work done. I noticed other people doing the same thing.

The main problem I had with using git is it did not match the way we worked. Git assumes there is one person who is the gatekeeper, who decides what gets into the source, and who does some integration and testing. In research there usually is no one in charge of that, instead everyone is responsible for their own code, testing it, and integrating it. The git model was wrong for us, we never used pull requests at all, because there was no one person who understood everything well enough to approve them. Students don't have the experience or time to be the integrator, the profs don't even write code, and I had multiple other things that I had to do. So using git made a mess of what had been a simple process previously. Git was designed by Linus to make his life easier in managing changes to a kernel. It does not work well in other scenarios and should not be used in many circumstances. Yes, you can make it work, but at a cost.