Subject: Re: best git practices, was Re: Git User's Survey 2007 unfinishedsummary continued

From: Andreas Ericsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:08:14 +0200

Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-10-25 at 11:21 -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:
> 
>> And of course it's inelegant.  You just told us we were dealing with
>> CVS-brain-damaged corporate developers who can't be bothered to learn
>> about the fine points of using things the git way.
> 
> Ignore the corporate developers who use SCMs only because their company
> requires them to.  Git is not the right thing for them;

Quite contrary to what I think, and quite contrary to what Linus said in
his google speach. The problem with using a chainsaw instead of a tooth-
pick is that it's much easier to hurt yourself with a chainsaw. It's a
lot easier to get real work done though.

> some
> Eclipse-based monstrosity probably is.  It's like the horrendous
> Oracle-based expense-reporting thing we have to use at Novell; I use it
> because they make me, not because I'm particularly excited about
> reporting expenses :)
> 

Nobody's particularly excited about reporting expenses. That's why there
are so few OSS solutions for it, and the ones that exist suck horribly
because whoever got the job of making the system knew his users would
simply hate it, no matter how perfect it was. It's one of those things ;-)

> However, *do think* of the free software developers who have been using
> CVS forever.  You won't make friends among them if you keep saying, "you
> use CVS?  You are brain-damaged, then."  CVS has been as good/bad to
> them as to anyone else, and they are probably delighted to get a better
> solution.  That solution needs to take into account the concepts to
> which they have been exposed for the past N years.  Just because your
> new concepts are better, doesn't mean that their old ones were wrong in
> their time.
> 

Well, perhaps they were. CVS was a fairly important learning phase, much
like Thomas Edison who first discovered 2000 ways of not making a light-
bulb. It doesn't make them less valuable though, and the reason to keep
going until perfection is reached is that machines are made for work, and
humans are made for fun.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   [email-masked]
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231