Trying to learn git without learning the internal object model is like trying to learn SQL without understanding what foreign keys are #hottake

Drew DeVault

Lulu · לולו

@drewdevault

idk, maybe in both cases these are slightly advanced topics that can be picked up after figuring out the basics?

Drew DeVault

@lulu agreed, but a lot of people object to learning the internals being a necessary step at some point of the learning process. It's the main line of argument in the git-is-bad discourse. It's especially frustrating given that an explanation of git internals could fit on a business card

khm

git is EXACTLY like sql, in that most computer nerds learn it early enough that they regard it as natural law and they start using it for myriad kinds of shit that doesn't need it at all.

also the implementation details are of interest to absolutely nobody except when they inevitably lead to horrific performance issues, the resolution of which requires such a massive time investment that the person is now emotionally invested in the tooling.

all of which could have been avoided if the industry hadn't collectively abandoned typed and/or structured filesystems, but we sandbagged two entire generations of programmers into expecting almost nothing from their operating system and taking for granted that massive third-party frameworks are the only way to pursue data integrity

also I hate them both

Martijn Braam

@drewdevault The true way to learn git is with a SVN -> GIT translation guide