[squiggleblaz]

A local minimum is a point in the design space from which any change is an improvement (but there's other designs which would be worse, if they make several larger changes). I think it's hard to make that claim about Git. You're probably referring to a local maximum, a point in the design space from which any change makes it better (but there's other designs which would be better, if they make several larger changes).

In my career, I've used Svn, Git and something I think it was called VSS. Git has definitively caused less problems, it's also been easy to teach to newbies. And I think the best feature of Git is that people really really benefit from being taught the Git models and data structures (even bootcamp juniors on their first job), because suddenly they go from a magic incantation perspective to a problem-solving perspective. I've never experienced any other software which has such a powerful mental model.

That of course doesn't mean that Mercurial is not better; I've never used it. It might be that Mercurial would have all the advantages of git and then some. But if that were so, I think it would be hard to say that Git is at a local maximum.

[usefulcat]

> something I think it was called VSS

Hmm, maybe Microsoft Visual Source Safe? I remember that. It was notorious for multiple reasons:

* Defaulted to requiring users to exclusively 'check out' files before modifying them. Meaning that if one person had checked out a file, no one else could edit that file until it was checked in again.

* Had a nasty habit of occasionally corrupting the database.

* Was rumored to be rarely or not at all used within Microsoft.

* Was so slow as to be nearly unusable if you weren't on the same LAN as the server. Not that a lot of people were working remotely back then (i.e. using a dial-up connection), but for those who were it was really quite bad.

[forrestthewoods]

> it's also been easy to teach to newbies

The number of guides proclaiming the ease of Git is evidence that Git is not easy. Things that are actually easy do involve countless arguments about how easy they are.

I can teach an artist or designer who has never heard of version control how to use Perforce in 10 minutes. They’ll run into corner cases, but they’ll probably never lose work or get “into a bad state”.

[remexre]

> A local minimum is [...]

Unless you're in ML, in which case it's a minimum of the loss function, not the utility function...

[zerocrates]

> You're probably referring to a local maximum, a point in the design space from which any change makes it better (but there's other designs which would be better, if they make several larger changes).

I think you meant "worse" for that first "better."

[pseudalopex]

Git being easy to teach to newbies is an uncommon opinion. It was not clear if you meant easier than Subversion. But this would be even more uncommon.

[steveklabnik]

> I've never experienced any other software which has such a powerful mental model.

I hate to be that guy, but you should spend some time with jj. I thought the same, but jj takes this model, refines it, and gives you more power with fewer primitives. If you feel this way about git, but give it an honest try, I feel like you'd appreciate it.

Or maybe not. Different people are different :)