this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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What were your misconceptions about Git when you first started? (programming.dev)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I used CVS and ClearCase before moving into Git, and it took me some time to adjust to the fact that the cost of branching in Git is much much less than ClearCase. And getting into the "distributed" mindset didn't happen overnight.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

there has to have been a significant global productivity cost due to the lack of a better UI.

I'm not so sure about this to be honest. If it were really that big of a problem, someone would have made an effort to resolve it. The fact that people still use it anyway suggests to me that it's a bit of an overblown issue.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If it were really that big of a problem, someone would have made an effort to resolve it. The fact that people still use it anyway suggests to me that it’s a bit of an overblown issue.

As I said in another reply ... how many GUIs and text editor plugins are there for git and how many use them?

What other CLI tool has as much work put into GUIs, wrappers and plugins that do not try to replace the underlying tool/CLI, even accounting for popularity?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There is no other CLI tool like Git. But

Shell or Bash has various alternative shells.

Vim has numerous plugins and alternatives/extensions.

Linux distributions are wide and varied, forking out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yea, I think they’re all different. Alternative shells are about more than polishing a UI, and in many ways so are distros. And text editors are basically platforms and have been for a while, though it is interesting to single out git as being more like something like vim compared to other CLIs (as you say, it’s different). But even so, it’s not nearly a platform like a test editor, most apps for it a UI wrappers that don’t alter its core utility/function, to my point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think the fundamental difference is that Git is a CLI tool. But that's not how or where people use and want to use it. So obviously various interfaces are being created. It's not alternative CLI that are created. It's UIs and GUI interfaces. For a lack of a [more-than-barebone] official one.

Shells remain CLI. Distros are also technically/technologically driven.

Maybe the better analogy is that with vim and nano, we see many text editors and IDEs with GUIs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Maybe the better analogy is that with vim and nano, we see many text editors and IDEs with GUIs.

Interesting. I'm not so sure about the divide you draw between vim/nano and GUI IDEs. Historically vim and nano were basically the GUIs of their time. Preceding vim was ex and ed, which were basically CLI text editing tools build for the actually printed on paper typewriter interfaces computers like PDPs used to run. If you're not familiar, and you think vim can be obscure ... try running ed MYFILE! It's basically a sort of grep and sed REPL for editing text (where, interestingly, historically tools like grep actually came out of ed not the other way round). Vim can be used in a sort of ed mode with vim -e (AFAIU it's actually ex mode, which is a more advanced version of ed).

So I'd say vim is more like any sort of GUI/TUI or text editor plugin for git and git is like the old ancient CLI equivalent ed that no one knows about or uses anymore because having a visual mode just makes too much sense.

And this is basically where I fall ... I think a vgit should exist, that provides a terminal TUI of some sort, and that as with vim and ed it should totally supplant git while also having a CLI mode too. That this hasn't happened, back to my original point, is a problem and honestly a little strange.