It seems like a lot of programmers don't need a clear mental model to work. Quite the opposite, the artificial complexity, and the fact that they can handle it through painful memorization of the mnemonics, is seen as a badge of honour.
So this comment on Reddit about yet another guide to Git workflows made my day:
Can't help but think that there's something massively wrong with git's interface if we really need this many articles and blog posts on how to use it, seems a week can't go by without another one...
Yep. Someone said it, and it wasn't me.
I was often baffled by the peculiarities of Git, until I realized that it wasn't only me. Indeed, there are many developers that do notice when the usability of a tool, regardless of its kind, affects work. As an example, the main reason that in Git it is so difficult to recover from an error is because of its lack of abstraction. When things go bad, and they will since the commands are so unintuitive and error-prone, you will be forced to learn the arcane, badly abstracted bowels of it. Many times users depend on file system backups of their repositories just for that reason.
OK, enough bashing Git for a day...
Published on December 5, 2012 at 20:19 EST
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