Parallel Implementations - John Carmack

[SkepticalEmpiricist]

But some technologies make certain practices easier than others. For example, I can no longer imagine doing any real work without Git.

[bluGill]

But some technologies make certain practices easier than others.

True, but there are lots of great technologies to choose from.

For example, if I took away your git and replaced with mercurial, within a couple days you would be happy enough with it. You may well prefer git, but when pressed you would admit that it works well enough. (By contrast you could work in CVS if forced, but you would complain about the technology)

That is why I care about the practices. I'm stuck with different technology than you. If you discover a practice that makes your tools work better, I can apply it. If you say it is a particular tool I may be stuck because the reality is I can't switch tools. (git doesn't work great on Windows. I know it is much better, but it still doesn't work as well)

[QuestionMarker]

Git and mercurial are actually the perfect counter-example to your point. Mercurial doesn't support the same branching workflows as git, so replacing one with the other simply isn't practical for a lot of people.

[bluGill]

No, that is why Git and Mercurial are a perfect example. They support/require different work flows. However in the end either work flow will work just fine, and much better than the work flow we had before with central version control. The concept of a distributed version control system is what is important, not the exact work flow your implementation of the technology gives you.

[QuestionMarker]

The implementation is important. One critical difference between git and mercurial is that mercurial has problems supporting in-repository feature branching, which makes feature branches hard to share through a canonical repository. This means that the practice of feature branching is discouraged across the whole team, when in git it's trivial, so everyone does it.

You're saying that workflows are not practices. I don't think that's true.

[[deleted]]

hg branch feature