Comment by js2

Are you not a programmer? Do you not ever find yourself having to debug an issue? When you have to, are you not glad when there's sufficient information in the log files to do so, even though 99.9% of the time you never look at the logs?

> Imagine typing cd folder

It's not comparable. `cd` is a local command (technically a shell built-in) that completes instantly (unless you cd to a hung NFS mount...). So it honors the Unix philosophy of emitting nothing on success.

But cloning is a network operation. And it's normal for networking tools to output progress by default. See `wget` and `curl`.

The problem with hiding progress under `--verbose` is that by the time you need the information (why is this taking so long?), it's too late to add `--verbose`. You'd have to cancel the command and run it again losing progress.

If you don't want it, then use `--quiet` and move on with your day.

(Sure you could make it smarter by deferring outputting anything until it realizes the operation is taking some time. Patches welcomed.)