Post #869722

2026-03-30 20:53 UTC

I always forgive Git a lot of its bullshit on account of how it&#39;s one of those programs originally created in the 70s that are just half a century of cruft layered on top of outdated UI conventions that they were still making up as they went. Which is a problem, because Git came out in 2005

Replies (11)

@Kaution@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-30 21:30

@andrewt Take your pick: https://git-scm.com/tools/guis

Open ##1658285
@lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-30 22:35

@andrewt i use hg-git, life is good.

Open ##1658287
@SethMilliken@mas.to 2026-03-31 04:20

@andrewt @bitprophet TBF, git managed to accumulate the same volume of cruft in less than half the time.

Open ##1658293
@sebug@hachyderm.io 2026-03-31 10:19

@andrewt I vividly remember not having used it through university in the 2000s and *still* get the impression it was written in the 70s. Git was perfect for Linus, and I think y combinator hacker culture and personality cults are the reason we now have to have a distributed vcs in that style for everything…

Open ##1658294
@gnuplusknoppers@troet.cafe 2026-03-31 12:10

@andrewt I've always been extremely confused how people were using Git on the command line, because it's just so arcane. My GUI pick was Git Graph in VSCode. But once I picked up jujutsu last year even doing rebases on the command line suddenly became incredibly easy. JJ proves that the Git frontend is really badly designed, since it takes the same backend (full compatibility) and builds a much more orthogonal set of operations on top. https://steveklabnik.github.io/jujutsu-tutorial/introduction/what-is-jj-and-why-should-i-care.html

Open ##1658297
@frummidge@meow.social 2026-03-31 17:43

@andrewt one problem with git is that its designers and early users had only just barely escaped the vile clutches of other, worse version control systems and all of the early users only wanted the smallest possible filesystem mutation primitives in order to automate their workflows. The git command line interface works great in CI/CD and scripting to make efficient sequences of operations. If that's not the way you use the tool, then uh yes very much the set of operations is hard to use and remember. Otherwise you have to internally copy the understanding of the first two power users in order to use it well. I wish there was a discussion of "the trauma of using X made me design Y to be like this and that" and how it might be difficult to use Y if you didn't have those experiences with X.

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@brooke@bikeshed.vibber.net 2026-03-31 18:03

@andrewt rofl

Open ##1658303
@argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-03-31 18:44

@andrewt In 2005 they were still making up distributed version control as they went. Hence the cruft. That was 21 years ago, by the way.

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@taq@thicc.horse 2026-03-31 21:37

@andrewt it WHAT

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@eragon@transfem.social 2026-03-31 22:22

@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz Wait? It's only 21 yo?

Open ##1658313
@StompyRobot@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-01 02:02

@andrewt 2005 wasn't as modern as you think it was. It was years before the iPhone. Google had only just shipped an email service. And git improved on Subversion (*) so it's not like the precedent was all that great... (*) And TBF, bitkeeper

Open ##1658317