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by there 6199 days ago
doesn't it say something about git's usability that there are so many help guides, tutorials and screencasts just to try to show its basic functionality?

it's a revision control system for pete's sake. it should track revisions in your code and let you get back to work.
2 comments
schacon 6199 days ago
I think the fact that a lot of people feel driven to take their time to write about a tool is much more indicative that it is an incredibly helpful tool, not that it is difficult to use. If you used some tool and it was really hard and barely got the job done, would you feel passionate enough to write a post or tutorial on it? Does horrible usability drive passionate proselytizing? No.

The fact is that proper version control is a hard problem. Tracking your work quickly and simply without forcing you to conform to a workflow prescribed by the VCS tool itself is a non-trivial problem (unless of course your work is itself trivial). Git solves this problem elegantly and efficiently and the amount of information popping up recently are from users who are thrilled that a tool finally exists that does not limit how they do their work and who want to share that with others so they can work better too.

I am driven to do all the Git related stuff that I do because I love the tool and it is so much better than what I had ever used before, not because it's frustrating to me or I feel it's hard to use.

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jamesbritt 6199 days ago
"I think the fact that a lot of people feel driven to take their time to write about a tool is much more indicative that it is an incredibly helpful tool, not that it is difficult to use. If you used some tool and it was really hard and barely got the job done, would you feel passionate enough to write a post or tutorial on it? Does horrible usability drive passionate proselytizing? No."

But there are things about git that are non-obvious, and tricky if you've been accustomed to cvs, svn, or even hg.

It's sort of like learning OOP after years of BASIC. Once you get going, you may wonder what was so hard about it, but getting a proper mindset can be difficult.

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zouhair 6199 days ago
The same goes for Emacs and Vim, we should all throw them out as they are not intuitive to use and that they need a learning curve.
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