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Why don't people use git properly? | deadSimpleTech
deadsimpletech.comI think the worst failure mode I've ever seen is one team that maintained a "git repository" for a collection of analysis scripts that was simply a directory on a shared drive. It was technically speaking initiated as a git repository, but practically speaking it wasn't used as one: rather, the directory contained zipped copies of the code timestamped with when they were modified. There were very few commits to be seen, and I honestly hesitated to try and branch from them in any meaningful way. Of course there was no command line interface or anything to be had, and the git GUI software they had available was muddled enough that it confused me. In this situation, yes, *technically* they were using git, but in any real sense this clearly wasn't the case.
The GUI thing is basically a religion.
I’ve mentored plenty of juniors that could barely commit+push.
Whenever they ask me for help to do anything remotely complicated the conversation is always the same.
+ you have to click here, then click there
- but how do I do it in the CLI though?
+ Idk, I barely use the CLI. I believe it’s
some git command. But you can easily do it in the GUI, it’s 2 clicks- <does the command> that didn’t work <wastes 20 minutes trying to make it work>
+ Fine, I’ll search for the command.
<5 mins later>
+ Here is the command
- that worked!
Every. Fucking. Time.
Yeah also people get into a mess and don’t understand the state of the repo. Like they’re organising files without ever running
ls. If you ask these CLI fanatics for the solution they’ll say “you don’t need a GUI, just rungit log --tree --oneline --decorate --all”… which is just a poor man’s GUI.