Re: What is missing from Git v2.0

[David Lang <david@lang.hm>]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2014, Theodore Ts'o wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 02:23:18PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>>> I am not fundamentally opposed.  I just do not think it would add
>>> much value to new people at this point, and it will actively hurt
>>> if we shoved barely cooked one in 2.0.
>>
>> You are probably biased in that you've used Git far much more than
>> the average user has (or future new users).
>
> I think Junio has a really strong point.  If the goal is to make life
> easier for new users, allowing them to save a few keystrokes is
> probably not the most significant thing we can do.  And we have to
> balance this with the additional cognitive load in remembering how a
> particular two character alias maps to the "real" command.  This is
> especially true for commands which might not be used as often -- e.g.,
> "rebase", and for commands where the meaning of "git commit" without
> any argument is qualitatively different from what "ci" (for checkin)
> means in most other source management systems.
>
> So I do think it's worth thinking about this very carefully.  For
> certain, I would **not** recommend using shortcuts in example command
> sequences.  If the user reads "git rebase" or "git cherry-pick" it
> means a lot more than if they see a series of apparent chicken
> scratches filled with things like "git rb", "git pi", "git st", etc.
>
> In fact, to be fair, you may be getting biased because you're used to
> using the two character shortcuts, so for you, of *course* "rb" and
> "pi" and "ci" make a lot of sense.  But for someone who is starting
> from scratch, I really question how much it helps, and how much it
> might hurt, to see the two character shortcuts or even to have to
> remember the two character shortcuts.  And for a command like "rebase"
> where the user can very easily shoot themselves in the foot to begin
> with, I'd actually suggest that it's a _good_ thing that they have to
> type it out in full.

agreed, of all the things that people complain about regarding learning git, the 
fact that the commands are words instead of cryptic 2 letter abberviations is 
not one of them.

The complaints tend to be far more about how there are inconsistancies between 
commands, or they don't understand what's happening.

Adding a new inconsistancy, or changing words to abbreviations is a further 
barrier against new users, not an advantage for them.

David Lang