[amix]

I haven't read any books or longer tutorials on Git. I find it easy to use and if I run into trouble I just Google after help (which happens a few times a week). Throughout the day I mostly use 9 Git commands. Here are the top 9 commands I use:

    git checkout X
    git checkout -b new-branch
    git commit
    git add; git mv; git rm; 
    git pull --rebase
    git rebase origin/master
    git push origin X

I have used this for a long time without running into huge amounts of trouble (and if I need to revert back to a specific or do anything special I can always consult Google). The bottom line is: For simple cases Git is really simple to use and to learn. You don't need to become a Git master to use Git.

The problem is that people introduce the powerful features of Git that only a few percentage of people will ever use.

[forrestthewoods]

Everything you just said is exactly why Git is not simple and can not be learned in 15 minutes. Just by operating from the command line you've already left the realm of "simple" in my opinion. Having to learn 9 commands is not simple. Having to hit Google for help multiple times per week is not simple.

I strongly, strongly disagree with your assertion that "for simple cases Git is really simple to use and to learn". I've watched many programmers, artists, and designers who have used source control struggle with Git from day 1. I'm sorry, it's just not simple and if it were this topic wouldn't come up over and over and over.

Again, I say none of this as a slight to Git. Complicated things are complicated. That's ok, but pretending they aren't isn't helpful.

[philwelch]

> Just by operating from the command line you've already left the realm of "simple" in my opinion.

Git is a tool for programmers. There's no excuse for a programmer to be uncomfortable with the command line.

[nohbody]

The problem (for me, anyway) isn't that git basically requires a command line to do anything - the problem is that git's command line syntax is exceptionally complex. I'm used to being able to do `man foo' and get a short listing of all possible orderings of parameters and arguments that a tool will accept. git's syntax is so powerful that it isn't possible to do this - a lot of the summaries in the manpages have the dreaded one-line `command [ARGS] ... [PARAMETERS] ...' that I tend to associate with a lot of the GNU tools.

Maybe if someone added an EBNF grammar to the documentation...

[gurkendoktor]

I am a productive programmer and I am absolute uncomfortable with the command line. I can't count the times I have written

    svn commit -m "Finally fixed bug #123!"

...only to get some weird bizarro error because I should have used '' or escaped the !. This is usually when I am deeply focused on some programming language or bug #123.

Tower.app is the only reason I've ever touched git, and the line-by-line staging and committing is nothing I would ever bother to do with a CLI.

[philwelch]

Well, suit yourself. It's just a tremendously useful skill to have. Makes it a bit less of a hassle to ssh into the odd server to check the logs, or dump a database, or use tools that don't have a GUI.

I mean, fundamentally, you're typing things to a computer and then the computer does what you typed. Why should that notion be uncomfortable to a programmer of all people?

[gurkendoktor]

Oh, I can use the terminal, I can also theoretically write PHP, and every vim user can theoretically use Eclipse. But that doesn't mean that any of us would be comfortable with it - we'd all be anxious and focused on the tool (instead of the problem at hand) not to break stuff left and right.

[hkolek]

What kind of argument is that? How can you ever learn anything new with this attitude? If you never leave your comfort zone you will never make any progress. Just do it.

[kamaal]

I think this is a general problem with people with extreme addiction to IDEs and Windows based UIs.

I've known people in my team who can't do any work on the command line comfortably. I see this problem especially among people who work on Frontend and especially Java developers.

If a certain set of tools are making you dumber by the day, know it for sure that it will be automated or you will be replaced by lesser skilled cheap labor inevitably.

[crono5788]

> If a certain set of tools are making you dumber by the day

How does "not comfortable with the command line" translate to "dumber by the day?" If people get their training using IDEs and go on to be productive using primarily IDEs, how does being uncomfortable with the command line reflect on their intelligence in any way?

> know it for sure that it will be automated or you will be replaced by lesser skilled cheap labor inevitably.

Yes, the mundane, confusing use of the git command line is here to stay and the dumb "actually design and engineer an application" world of IDEs is going to be replaced by robots. You are a fucking genius. Only on the internet can such backwards and completely worthless logic be said because if you tried to say this shit to anyone in real life you'd be laughed out of the room.

[damncabbage]

How does "not comfortable with the command line" translate to "dumber by the day?" If people get their training using IDEs and go on to be productive using primarily IDEs, how does being uncomfortable with the command line reflect on their intelligence in any way?

I agree with you completely. Being familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the console does not make you smarter than people who aren't; you've just learnt different things.

You are a fucking genius. Only on the internet can such backwards and completely worthless logic be said because if you tried to say this shit to anyone in real life you'd be laughed out of the room.

You went off the rails here. You can disagree without being abusive. Downvoted, sorry.

[kamaal]

You are taking it personally.

>>How does "not comfortable with the command line" translate to "dumber by the day?" If people get their training using IDEs and go on to be productive using primarily IDEs, how does being uncomfortable with the command line reflect on their intelligence in any way?

Because the common characteristics of such people is to heavily depend on intellisense and auto complete to do almost any task. Tool generated code is so common in those communities most code is generally taken care by the IDE. Import statements, exception handling, try/catch blocks, loop generation in context of previous statements. The list endless...

When you are tuned to thinking this way you basically lose any touch on proactive coding. You stop thinking, the IDE starts thinking for you. You stop reading API because you know everything is about to be auto completed, anyway. Now the issue is you are offloading the job of thinking to the IDE. This is dangerous.

If a rookie can do what an expert can, just by using an IDE. I guess its time for the expert to fear for his job.

Lack of knowledge of command line utils is just one such case. You can either learn how to use awk/sed/Perl + Text processing utils. Or you can open up eclipse and endlessly re implement what the command line has to already offer.

When you start looking this from the larger perspective, refusing to learn tools designed to solve a problem in the proper way and taking short cuts, actually makes your life difficult on the longer run.

>>Yes, the mundane, confusing use of the git command line is here to stay and the dumb "actually design and engineer an application" world of IDEs is going to be replaced by robots. You are a fucking genius. Only on the internet can such backwards and completely worthless logic be said because if you tried to say this shit to anyone in real life you'd be laughed out of the room.

Definition of dumb varies. Definition of 'usability' varies. By your definition a programming language could be called dumb, a microprocessor and its interfaces can be called dumb, A pilots cabin and controls can be called dumb(As they are both not easy to laymen, and have never even made progress in that direction). A tool like git is not designed to be a toy or recreation software. Its supposed to manage text/binary versions in situations faced by individuals, small and large teams managing software projects.

Therefore it is designed to cover features in that direction, for programmers. Not for your ordinary user who needs to use the ATM to withdraw money.

Complaining about command line's usability being difficult is same as complaining about an Airplane's cockpit.

[scottschulthess]

"Everything you just said is exactly why Git is not simple and can not be learned in 15 minutes. " haha agreed

"Just by operating from the command line you've already left the realm of "simple" in my opinion." It's all about the audience, people who are used to CLIs will find new CLIs that are similar to the ones they already know simple.

"I strongly, strongly disagree with your assertion that "for simple cases Git is really simple to use and to learn"

I've taught git to designers in 15 minutes and had them off and running for the next ~6 months. That said even after a few months of using it I still lack understanding of some of the core concepts.

[kamaal]

Sorry, But how is that difficult.

Even the simplest form of source control involves checkout->change/add->commit->checkin. And this is regardless of any version control system you will ever use.

The only extra stuff there is branching and merging. And to be frank. I've never felt the individual need to do that. Its a different story if you have a big team and members working on several projects which merge at a time. Now that's difficult with any VCS, not just git.

But for individual development anybody should be able to do the checkout->add/change->commit>checkin easily.

[base698]

Reading through the comments here is infuriating, and it's no wonder people don't git what the big deal is.</lame>

With git you can share you current work to any arbitrary remote branch. The implications are your half baked feature can get pushed up and your coworker can do a checkout on the new remote branch. If they have suggestions they can make a change which you can cherry-pick off their branch into your branch. Also, you can branch off your current working branch, rebase master and merge their new branch in and push that up to master when everything works as expected. Try that workflow without breaking the central repo effecting everyone else's work in SVN.