What’s wrong with Git? A conceptual design analysis (2016)
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderAs a tech lead on game projects that feature less than the most technical developers (artists, game designers) the biggest "problem" with git happens to be its strength. The inconsistent cli and naming can be pasted over with cleaner GUIs. No, the real issue is gits configurability. Not just the configurability but the enforced decentralization of that configurability. For better or worse, it seems like git is actively hostile to any kind of concept of a central authority. Can I…
The issue here is that git is: 1) A tool for managing collaborative work through a beautiful distributed graph theory tree model[1]... 2) ...with a very, very difficult to use UI. Unfortunately: 3) A good, intuitive UI for manipulating the underlying model without ignoring edge cases or removing functionality is extremely difficult, and indeed, nobody has done it yet. So you periodically see these articles pop up decrying the UI, but nobody ever makes a great UI that wraps the…
> [git's concept-relationship diagram is] kind of complicated to explain – which is really the authors' point. As a somewhat experienced git user, I have no idea what the hell is going on in the diagram. But this means that authors have constructed the diagram incorrectly, not that git is inherently complicated.
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 242
- Total comments
- 322
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-10-24 | What’s wrong with Git? A conceptual design analysis | monkeyshelli | 3 | 1 |
| 2016-10-24 | What’s wrong with Git? A conceptual design analysis | jalvz0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2016-10-25 | What’s wrong with Git? A conceptual design analysisFirst breakout | colinprince | 92 | 109 |
| 2019-05-29 | What’s wrong with Git? A conceptual design analysis (2016) | eindiran | 3 | 0 |
| 2021-04-27 | What’s wrong with Git? A conceptual design analysis (2016)Hall induction · Best thread · Latest 20+ point return | edward | 142 | 212 |