[megous]

Reminds me of:

    Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

    -Linus Torvalds

Anyway, it's not for everyone to get to understand git this way, I guess. Some people will just react "just tell me how to do X in git!"

[jimmaswell]

Sometimes you just want your tool to get out of your way and get the job done, instead of deeply understanding it. No shame in that. There are limited hours in the day and sometimes other things are more important.

[megous]

I get what you mean, but git is basically a tool for manipulating the .git directory (and a working directory checkout).

I think understanding what .git dir contains and represents is as important as understanding the tool.

It's not like you need to understand how the tool works internally, or how it's built.

Analogy would be that you want to understand how to use a hammer, sure, but also the characteristics of material you manipulate with it. You don't need to understand how the hammer is built.

[mhh__]

I work with some very good programmers who don't worry about code. Past a certain point it bites. You have to be thinking about scalability early so someone else doesn't have to refactor someone else's pride and joy because it's become full of overly concrete logic.

[bironran]

Like a lot of things Linus, it's very pretentious and aloof but right at the core of it. Code matters a lot and bad code can tank performance, stop evolution and introduce security issues. But with Git, this is a mostly truthful statement.

[megous]

I remember reading a quote where he states, that when looking at new code he starts with data structures, to get an understanding of what's going on. Or something to that effect.

That would be more applicable here. But I couldn't immediately find it, so I pasted this one instead, which is somewhat close but not perfectly related to the OP.