On the popularity of git [Was: Git question: when using branches, how does git treat working files when changing branches?]

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hello, David.

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 02:21:47PM +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
> At some point of time you should develop a theory as to why Git actually
> managed to become the most popular version control system in spite of
> the meaning of its commands not being obvious as soon as you can wave
> around an English language certificate.

I've been wondering about git's popularity for some long time.  That
git's complexity is not necessary in a powerful VCS is demonstrated by
the counterexamples of hg and (to a lesser extent) bzr.

git had (and has) Linux behind it, thus giving a lot of hackers being
forced to learn git early on.  This surely gave git a huge advantage in
numbers at the start of the competition.

But I think the real reason is that there are lots of hackers around,
possibly mainly the younger ones, who revel in their mastery of
complexity rather than attempting to sidestep and avoid it.

> -- 
> David Kastrup

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).