Comment by dijksterhuis

disagree, with a caveat.

to summarise: use the desktop apps now, but thou shalt need to learn the CLI.

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when i’ve taught absolute development beginners how to use git and how to do PRs i show them both the CLI and GitHub desktop. not every single thing. but i at least show them add/commit/push and creating/checking out branches in the CLI.

why?

1) this CLI thing is what power users / experienced folks use. this is your long term goal.

2) oh look, the terminal is typing things out instead of clicking on buttons which have slightly different names (target audience has never seen a terminal)

3a) some things cannot be unfucked in a desktop app. i don’t have to explain what the CLI is to show them how to unfuck it. i might have to remind them. but it’s not totally alien to them. they’re only seeing the fix for the first time, not the fix and the CLI.

3b) they might feel more comfortable trying to use the CLI when they’ve already been shown it before. ideally in tandem with 3a — “hey i need to do this thing to unfuck it, could you sit with me while i go through to avoid fucking it even more”

4) maybe they go “screw it, i want the pain because i really want to be a magician at this”. it’s nice for them to have the option of the easier, simpler path when they’re having a bad day with it.

ill always suggest that absolute beginners use the desktop apps because it does reduce early fuck ups. and part of that involves showing them the desktop apps.

but i feel they need to be made aware the desktop apps are not the be end and end all. they can try the CLI a few times if they want. at some point, they will have to use it.

they also need to learn to fuck it up. making mistakes is how human beings really learn.

both making mistakes and demo-ing the CLI early, often and safely; rather than later and rarely; gets people to “magician” level faster in my experience.

essentially, you have more to learn buddy. keep working on it if you want to be one of the magicians in the team. if you don’t, that’s fine. but at some point you’ll need to deal with this CLI thing.

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> people need to see visually how they can interact with the tree.

i’ve got a whole diagram thing i draw live showing them how everything is based on commits or a collection of commits, moving the commits around in front of them.

seems to be a better way to cover remotes, branches and eventually PRs than leaving them to work it out with some history visualisation which is usually a bit hard to read.