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Re: Obscure error/warning/information message from git pull


From: John Yates
Subject: Re: Obscure error/warning/information message from git pull
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 16:59:58 -0500

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
You cannot help people understand new tools if you start by telling
them to forget everything they've learned.  You should instead build
on what they know, or think they know, gradually replacing that with
new knowledge.

Earlier VCS often had more reified branches.  A phrase that crops up a
lot in git descriptions is "lightweight branching".  This was achieved
by paring back the branch concept - leaving nothing more than the nodes
reachable from a named ref - and by making ref manipulation very common.

When contrasting git to earlier VCS in none of the git intros I have
read have I seen that particular point made.

I have been programming for well over 40 years and have used many VCS.
Personally I always found branching a hurdle in earlier VCS, something
I avoided.  After using git for less than a year I can say emphatically
that I am far happier and more confident working with git's notion of
lightweight branching than with branching in any previous VCS I used
(and I have used a _lot_!)  I have noticed that as I now use branches
actively (both privately and with colleagues) I have a better, deeper
understanding of their concepts and mechanics.  The fact that a single
set of concepts and mechanism scales from the tiny/personal to the
large/project-wide helps one polish one's skills.

/john



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