Comment by lkrubner

* there's no reason you have to use all these git features *

If you are not using all of the Git features, then why use Git? Why not use something simple, like Subversion? As I wrote in the linked essay:

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When I list these complaints for developers, most of them respond “You are complaining about Git’s power. The stuff you list isn’t really a flaw, rather those are all examples of how amazing Git is. It is flexible enough that you can do almost anything with it.”

I agree, Git is amazing and very powerful. What I’m suggesting is that we should recognize that it has a very high cost. It might empower complex workflows for sophisticated teams of experienced computer programmers, but it exiles the rest of the staff, and this has significant productivity costs. 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.

Git is very powerful? I’m willing to go along with that line of thought so long as we all understand that using a tool that is more powerful than needed can lead to problems.

http://www.smashcompany.com/business/business-productivity-h...