Yet software is not a chainsaw and a huge amount of people never learn to use their software tools. Especially since they're 100x more complex than hardware tools and nobody has time to master everything.
If you are using a chainsaw in a wood shop, you are probably doing something wrong. The saying “learn your tools” means to spend some time learning your options and what is available to you, learning the “gotchas” and why. Woodworking tools are rather complex with “gotchas” that will kill you in less than a hundred ms.
Using Git isn’t much more complex than using a lathe (simpler even, as you can get by with no skill and rote memorization). Taking a weekend to learn the data structures, and how everything fits together is not a hard ask. Especially since you literally only have to do it once in your entire career.
> Taking a weekend to learn the data structures, and how everything fits together is not a hard ask. Especially since you literally only have to do it once in your entire career.
Like all simplifications, this is false. If all you do for years after is commit, push, merge, you'll forget.
Especially since you'll need those brain cells to learn the new CPU/GPU architecture, the new JavaScript framework, the new corporate security policy, the docs from your internal architecture team, etc.
Nobody's life revolves around intricate VCS details.
You don’t need to memorize it for life. Jeez man, don’t be so hard on yourself.
The point is, you know what is possible. You know what is impossible. 12 years later, something happens and you go … hmm, I used to know what is going on. I think I need to search for something about git-tree or something?
The point is, you know what to search for, a starting point. You don’t just reach for git cherry-pick, but realize you can use git rebase --onto to copy/paste an entire branch. You don’t worry about merge conflicts because you only have to do it once with rerere. You learn git reflog will remind you what branch you were working on this morning before you got pulled into some shenanigans in prod. You can set up automation with global hooks. There’s so much you can know to do less work and you only need to remember the parts that are valuable to you.
After learning git about 5 years ago stuff like ^ is all second nature to me, for nearly 10 years since switching from SVN. My first 5 years was just like you said. Commit, pull, commit, pull. I didn’t even know it could do anything else and I was worse for it.
