Comment by rootlocus
7 years ago
> 2. data is erased for good because someone makes a mistake while using rebase
No. Just no. Please stop spreading FUD like it's candy. Git only deletes commits after a GC, which won't erase commits from reflog and will keep unreferenced commits for at least a month before deleting them. And rebasing generates new commits, leaving the old ones exactly how they were. If somebody lost a commit after a rebase, and nobody nearby could help them recover it, they should consider spending a few hours learning about git.
I've been using git for 4 years both at work (with a team of 40+ people) and at home, without ever having any of the problems listed here (except 3 which has nothing to do with git). It takes a few hours, maybe a few days to understand how git works and how to use it. Instead of blaming the tools, you (and your team) should probably learn how to use them.
>If somebody lost a commit after a rebase, and nobody nearby could help them recover it, they should consider spending a few hours learning about git.
GIT is the only source control system where you can completly loose commited data by actions (or commands) available the non-admin user. It's funny to see that this is considered a "feature" and not a design failure.
> completly loose commited data
Except the whole point is that you can't completely lose commited data, even if you tried really hard. And the solution to the problem was `git reflog` which shows the history of the HEAD.
"Instead of blaming the tools, you (and your team) should probably learn how to use them."
From the essay:
--------------------
And Git is intimidating, not just to non-technical staff, but also to inexperienced programmers. In How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps I talk about Sital, and his unwillingness to commit things to Git. He was learning a great deal about many other technologies, and he didn’t have any spare energy to learn about Git. He went a month without making a commit, and then he only did so because I insisted. After I put a lot of pressure on him, he got to the point where he would make one commit a day, at night, when he was stopping for the day. He would commit to the master branch, because he was confused how to handle different branches. When there was a merge conflict, I would resolve it for him. We worked together for 6 months, and in that time he learned a great deal about a lot of important topics, but he never really learned how to use Git, because it was a low priority, for both him and our CEO.
> He was learning a great deal about many other technologies, and he didn’t have any spare energy to learn about Git.
Git is something that you can use on almost any project, with any team, at any company. It's something you need to use if you want to contribute to open source. Aside from your programming language of choice, it's probably the second most useful tool you should be learning as a software developer.
You're telling me a developer was too busy learning "other technologies", and in 6 months he couldn't be bothered (or was too afraid) to spend one or two hours going through a simple course about git? By that argument, he probably couldn't be bothered to learn how separate concerns into classes or how to use refactoring or write tests. What other things didn't he have time for? Unwillingness to learn is not an excuse.
> he never really learned how to use Git, because it was a low priority, for both him and our CEO.
I think it was more of a lower priority for your CEO than Sital. Learning git was something that benefited him more than it benefited the company.
I still have issues with your attitude, because it can be applied to anything useful in software development, but management might take issue with. Writing tests? Who needs them? The CEO doesn't care so they're low priority. Refactoring? Waste of time. Management wants shiny features not code quality. Developers have tried really hard to convince management that some overhead is needed to keep the quality high and maintenance easy. Your attitude is the exact opposite.
* Your attitude is the exact opposite. *
You setting your theory against my lived experience. If you want to understand the situation more fully, you can read How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps:
https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...
I did my best to re-create the extent to which decisions were driven by panic and the pressure of time.
Please note, every company in the world has a finite amount of time, and a finite amount of money. You can argue that a company should hire people with more experience, but people with more experience will be more expensive, so you will end up with less people. Or you can argue that a company should hire more people, of less experience, and then train them. Training takes time, so in this case you are trading time for money.
All of these strategies work, but in different circumstances. In the circumstances that I faced in 2015, described in the book, I advocated for the strategy of less people, of a higher skill level. I was, however, outvoted, which is a reality of corporate life.
It is relatively rare that a company follows an ideal strategy. What I see instead is constant course correction, often with a bit of a lag, so that the company ends up having the ideal strategy for dealing with the situation that it faced 6 months ago, which is not necessarily the ideal strategy for what it is facing now.
Business tends to be chaotic. The Platonic Ideal of computer programming needs to be adjust to the real realities that businesses face.
To be clear, Sital's attitude was a major problem, and myself and co-workers advocated that he be fired. But management kept him on, and I was given the responsibility of covering for the gaps in his knowledge. I was not happy about this, but this is a reality of business: we often have to accept that a decision has been made that we strongly disagree with, and then we need to somehow make the best of it.
8 replies →
About this:
"No. Just no. Please stop spreading FUD like it's candy. Git only deletes commits after a GC, which won't erase commits from reflog and will keep unreferenced commits for at least a month before deleting them."
It is frustrating that you continue to take your advanced skills for granted. It is frustrating that you can not see what should be an obvious fact: that your skills are above average and therefore it is a mathematical fact that most people have less skill than you, and their lack of skill is a real world business situation that needs to be dealt with realistically. And more so, for the rest of your career your skills will continue to develop, so the gap between you and the average will continue to grow, and therefore the damage that you can do will continue to grow, if you fail to recognize that you are above average.
I can assure that I've seen data lost forever because of "git rebase". It doesn't matter that someone with your skills could have saved the situation. You were not there, therefore your skills don't matter! It is very important that you see this, or you will never be able to give accurate advice to business leaders.
If the leadership of a company decided to hire people with a skill level of x, then they should not also use a technology that requires a skill level of x + 1. You can reasonably tell them "For what you are trying to do, you should hire people with a skill level of x + 1." That is exactly what I did in the situation that I describe here:
https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...
But sometimes the business leadership will disagree with you. They may have terrible reasons, but if you can not get them to change their minds, then you need to deal with the consequences of their bad decisions. At which point it makes sense to advocate for a technology that only requires a skill level of x.
[ EDIT TO ADD ]
I'll point out that you are demonstrating a classic case of the Dunning–Kruger effect. In particular:
"the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."
That is, you have above average IQ and skill, therefore you perceive things to be easy, which are in fact not easy for the average.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
You are an elite programmer. Try to avoid acting like the kind elite programmer that I criticized in "Business productivity has been undermined by the hubris and power-grabbing of elite computer programmers".