> The whole point is that the tool should make it easy for you to do what you intend to do. That's the whole point of criticizing an application (or tool, as you put it). I am pretty sure that you can make beautiful and exact things with Git, but the fact is that sometimes they are difficult to perform or counter-intuitive, and that's the crux of the criticism.
I'm not sure I agree. There are tools that are inherently difficult, because the problem they attempt to help with are inherently complex problems: architecture, MRIs, corporate taxation, managing pilot and crew schedules for airlines, etc.
Managing source code for any system of sufficient complexity falls squarely into this domain. Git tackles this -- nicely, I would argue. Among other needs, VCS's need to separate code changes into manageable chunks, store them in a compact manner, and be able to distribute those changes efficiently over a network.
Git handles these quite nicely. Separately, you would like developers to have the ability to commit changes in small, related chunks, all while simultaneously preventing conflicts -- or at least making them difficult. Git does this as well.
> A tool should not be designed only to "allow" people to do certain things. It should also make these things easy and straight forward.
Again, I'm not sure I agree with this premise for all cases. Tools should be as complicated as they need to be, and no more. The basic workflow behind git -- add, commit, pull/push -- is not overly complicated, and I must be honest in admitting that it puzzles me when it is otherwise claimed. Is it easy? Apparently not for some. My personal path was CVS, SVN, MKS, Perforce, then git, and it did not take me long to understand the benefits of git over the others I had used.
It was pretty straightforward. Different, but hardly intractable, especially for a tool which is so singularly important to me as a developer. In that case I do not mind complexity, given the flexibility that is gained and, frankly, since it's what I do for a living.
I'm not sure I agree. There are tools that are inherently difficult, because the problem they attempt to help with are inherently complex problems: architecture, MRIs, corporate taxation, managing pilot and crew schedules for airlines, etc.
Managing source code for any system of sufficient complexity falls squarely into this domain. Git tackles this -- nicely, I would argue. Among other needs, VCS's need to separate code changes into manageable chunks, store them in a compact manner, and be able to distribute those changes efficiently over a network.
Git handles these quite nicely. Separately, you would like developers to have the ability to commit changes in small, related chunks, all while simultaneously preventing conflicts -- or at least making them difficult. Git does this as well.
> A tool should not be designed only to "allow" people to do certain things. It should also make these things easy and straight forward.
Again, I'm not sure I agree with this premise for all cases. Tools should be as complicated as they need to be, and no more. The basic workflow behind git -- add, commit, pull/push -- is not overly complicated, and I must be honest in admitting that it puzzles me when it is otherwise claimed. Is it easy? Apparently not for some. My personal path was CVS, SVN, MKS, Perforce, then git, and it did not take me long to understand the benefits of git over the others I had used.
It was pretty straightforward. Different, but hardly intractable, especially for a tool which is so singularly important to me as a developer. In that case I do not mind complexity, given the flexibility that is gained and, frankly, since it's what I do for a living.