Comment by wyuenho
7 years ago
TBH, I've been an hg and git user for about 10 years now, I have only come across simple things that you'd expect to work in git but doesn't. For the longest time, you have to resort to contortions like this[1] so as to not lose commits after reverting a merge and then merge again.
[1]: https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/howto/r...
What can't you do in Mercurial that you can in git these days?
BTW, I think we are talking about the same book.
I could name a few things, like interactive rebases, but the main thing is not something that can really be explained. Have you ever significantly become strong in some kind of contest, may it be sports, gaming, music or similar? There is this situation where one day you struggle with something and don't see an end, and the next day it finally clicks, and you can do things naturally that one day earlier where not even imaginable.
If you've experienced that once consciously, then you can regonize it and you know when you experience it you've hit someting really good in your life that moves you forward.
Sadly it seems you must take that hurdle in anything until a certain age or you will always believe this is impossible and therefore never invest the energy to reach it.
The thing is that this is not possible to achieve with any random software. For instance no matter how much you learn MS Word, you probably won't experience that. But when learning Vim or Emacs there's a chance you get there. Same is with git. And once you've achieved it once consciously, you will always want to be in that state in everything important you do.
That's why the really good stuff only has a few followers, most simply don't get the appeal because they never would invest the energy to get "there" even if they knew exactly how much it would take. But for those who have achieved it there is no going back. You cannot go back from controlling (almost) any bit of your repository to Mercurial.
But that's also why I think for most users something like Mercurial should be The VCS. Most people don't know the reward they are missing, so they don't feel the pain of missing it, and therefore have no logical reason to go through the pain of really learning git.
Long story short, you're using git because it makes you feel smart. Ironically, you even admit it - "therefore have no logical reason to go through the pain of really learning git". Correct, there is no logical reason to deal with a contorted DVCS when there are better alternatives. Your arguments are fully subjective.
If you tell a blind person, he should use the color red more when dressing, it might be a good advise, but for the blind person there is no logical reason to choose red over green.
What I'm saying is that most people are blind when it comes to skill, because they never make it over the hurdle once. But because most people don't have any skill, it is general consensus in our society to declare skills based on interest rather than the ability to solve hard problems or win competitions. I mean if one person is unable to judge if another person is good at solving merge conflicts, how could he criticize that person declaring himself as Git Expert Of The Team. And then again of course most people feel it is inappropriate to tell other people they are unskilled, so posts like this one get hated a lot on. But actually it's just calling out the facts. Sky is blue, grass is green, most people are too unskilled to even recognize what would enhance skills.
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