[billdueber]

Sigh. Another git thread, another pile of posts telling me that if I would _just do the work_ to understand the underlying data structure I could finally allow myself to be swept up in the _overwhelming beauty_ of the something something something.

The evidence that the git UI is awful is _overwhelming_. Yes, yes, I’m sure the people that defend it are very very very very smart, and don’t own a TV, and only listen to albums of Halloween sounds from the 1950s and are happy to type the word “shrug“ and go on to tell us how they’ve always found git transparent and easy. The fact is that brilliant people struggle with git every single day, and would almost certainly be better served by something that makes more sense.

[Izkata]

GP isn't describing the underlying data structures, they're describing the basic interface of commits, branches, and tags. The 101 stuff you have to learn regardless, for any version control, not just git. Dismissing it like this just sounds like someone who refuses to hold scissors by the handles.

[billdueber]

You’re right, of course, and I apologize to GP for conflating what they were saying with what I, to be fair, do often see in these threads.

Like others in these comments, I can use it just fine right up until I can’t. Then it’s back to the mini, many, many posts and questions and tutorials, sprawled across the Internet to try and solve whatever the issue is. JJ has shown that a better chrome can be put over the underlying model, And it’s frustrating to me that we are all collectively, apparently, expected to put up with a tool that generates so much confusion seemingly regardless of brilliance or expertise

[jeroenhd]

There are tools for the UI part. Most people I know only use command line git for doing stuff where GUIs give up (i.e. fixing repos in weird states). Usually, checking out a clean clone and switching to that will do the same without the GUI, just takes a bit longer if you know the command line fixes.

The issues most people seem to have with git are common version control issues. Version control is actually hard, even if it's just "what has changed", once you start going beyond two users editing a file at once. When three people edit a file at the same time, there's going to be complexity when those changes need to be applied back, and that's where you start getting into branching/merging/rebasing.

Just like some people simply cannot get functional programming/object oriented programming/imperative programming to click in their head, others will never truly grasp version control. It's a paradigm of its own. People who know lots of data structures like to trivialise version control into data structures ("it's just a list of ...") but the data structures are the chosen solution, not the problem.

Another complexity issue is that git is actually pretty smart, and will fix most problems automatically in the background. Often, when you need to manually operate on a git repo, you're in a situation where git doesn't know what to do either, and leaves it up to you as the expert to fix whatever is going on. And frankly, most people who use git are nowhere close to experts. The better Git tooling gets at fixing these situations for you, the worse your situation will be once you need to manually correct anything, and the worse your perception might get.

I have no good advice for you on how to work Git better. All I can say is that I'm very productive with Jetbrains' IDE integration, others seem to prefer Visual Studio Code's git integration, and then there's the Tortoise people. Find whatever tool works best for you and hope you'll have a random epiphany one day.

[_proofs]

perhaps it is time to take some personal accountability instead of lamenting the complexity in order to avoid the (overwhelming) challenge and learning.

yes, to understand an application, you must also understand the underlying data structures, architectures, models, use cases -- i am not sure what there's to roll eyes at. but there's no requirement that says that understanding has to be deep in order to work on it, or use it.

i think if you treat it like cleaning a large room, by picking out one corner at time and focusing on cleaning that before moving on, you'll find that the room is cleaned in no time, and git isn't anywhere nearly as complicated as it may feel.

there is absolutely no reason to digest a guide this dense for use-cases in every day production settings, bc those usages only make up about 10% of what this guide covers.

yes, learning things can be overwhelming, challenging, full of darkness and terrors, but that's what learning is, until you've learned.

but here is the catch imo: once you've learned, you don't stop learning and the challenges don't go away. you just become better at navigating the darkness, bc you get better at learning and managing feelings of overwhelm and confusion which are by products of complexity -- real or perceived or both.

jump in. it ain't that scary, even if it feels scary. i promise. i've been there, and you can overcome it.

[ajross]

Pretty much, yeah. Just do the work. It's not nearly as hard as whatever it is you're committing into it, I promise. Continuing to mock it via florid metaphor doesn't help anyone at this point.

[gitgood]

I'm always kind of aghast at the number of people who not only don't know git, but who cannot or will not learn it over years, or even decades.

Listen, I'm not that smart, and I managed to figure out how to solve even gnarly git issues one summer during an internship... 11 years ago? Ish? Now, I know git well, and not just "the three commands". I would be, honestly, so ashamed if it were a decade on and I still hadn't committed to learning this fundamental tool.

Version control is a hard problem, fundamentally, and a tool for experts will always take more effort to understand. I mean, aren't we supposed to be the software experts? If people can't learn git, I wouldn't trust them with the even harder parts of software development.

But this is a common attitude in industry now, unfortunately: a petulant demand for things to be easier, and for someone else to do the learning. Is it any wonder software today is so bad?

[wruza]

If people can't learn git, I wouldn't trust them with the even harder parts of software development.

This idea breaks under pressure. People have limited concentration and the more you demand for daily routine, the less there’s left for the actual job. This argument only makes sense in a relaxed setting with lots of time and coffee breaks. But all these problems tend to happen at friday evening when you’re expected to get your kids in an hour or something and this damn repo got broken again.

Yes, things should be easier. Cause you get what you get. If you want people who have no issues with git, feel free to enjoy the greatly reduced hiring pool and stop whining about someone not being able to juggle fifty things at once in their mind - focus on your hiring process and where to get the budget for inflated compensation instead.

Is it any wonder software today is so bad?

I remember delphi and vb time, when people - who were unable to understand or use CVS and SVN - made full-blown apps for real sectors, and it worked. Because it was easy. Nowadays all we have is important dudes with pseudo-deep knowledge of git, css, framework-of-the-month and a collection of playbooks, who cannot make a db-enabled hello username message box in less than a day. I don’t think you’re moving in the right direction at all with this. This paradigm is going further and further from good software, actually.

[ajross]

> Nowadays all we have is important dudes with pseudo-deep knowledge of git, css, framework-of-the-month and a collection of playbooks, who cannot make a db-enabled hello username message box in less than a day.

Interestingly that is exactly the opposite of my experience. Git is a practical tool with practical appeal to people who want to do practical things. Egghead gedankentheorists hate it, as evidenced by this very subthread.

In point of fact I find the ability to accomplish workaday tasks with git to be a far better predictor of someone's success as a developer than stuff like being able to recite Rust minutiae. People who like git are people who like getting stuff done.

[wruza]

People, whom I knew since these times and who really like getting stuff done and have done it much, all facepalmed when seen things like git, webdev, etc. Getting stuff done is not performing hundreds of technical operations and thinking “good, I’m so skilled”. It’s actually getting it done. I can almost guarantee that it’s a guy with far better predictor skills who will deliver mvp a month later than everyone else. Been through this countless times.

[gitgood]

I don't struggle with git, and I can assure you, I am not brilliant. I do, however, refuse to give up when something seems hard, and I refuse to ask the computer to be easier for me. (Understandably, I started programming computers to make them do what I wanted them to do, not to sit and whine when they didn't.)

[zelphirkalt]

Which brilliant people, who have put in an appropriate amount of time into learning any (D)VCS, are struggling with having a day to day working knowledge/familiarity with git? Can you point to some? Brilliant people is of course a definition question. But one of the defining qualities I would ascribe to a brilliant person, is the ability to quickly grasp concepts and ideas and reason about them. That seems to me to be the core quality one needs to use git, since it requires one to have a mental model, whether actually correct (which I think few people have) or just close enough to be useful.