alt Hacker Newsgit's data model is incredibly powerful and flexible, but its UX is famously... interesting:
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I puzzled over the "The Long and Short of It" as for me (git version 2.54.0)
git -h branch
git branch --help
I see that `git -h branch`, `git branch --help` and `git --help branch` give the long output but `git branch -h` gives the short. I suspect that `git [-h | --help] branch` is converted to `git help branch` which runs `help` with argument `branch`. But `git branch -h` runs `branch` with argument `-h`. Also as `git -h alias` prints the alias definition while `git alias -h` gives the short help for the aliased command.
It's always such a good experience to read well written articles like this from the early 2010s when our industry was a lot less self-important
Especially because the text is actually written by a human, and it's clear from every sentence
I use git every day and can do quite advanced stuff with it, but I do all of my work using magit in emacs. I don't even use emacs for writing code anymore, I only use it for git. I just can't be bothered with using the CLI, it is too painfully inconsistent.
The only downside to this is that it is hard for me to help people with git problems since I can only tell them what conceptually has to be done, not how to accomplish it using the CLI.
I don't fully agree with the checkout one. We do speak of checking out a file and checking out a branch using the same word, and they are not the same thing.
checkout -b however makes no sense. It should be the default behavior of git branch. It was probably put under checkout because it made for more straightforward code.
The hobgoblin one sent me
iirc Linus actually conceded this very early on and said that he thought it would be better if it were used as infrastructure to build tools on rather than the tool itself.
no idea where I saw that though and it was many many years ago.
TortoiseGit was very cool, and nothing stops us making more alternative UXes.
I miss the extensibility of Windows, back when programs still fought for the users (Tron reference). Shell extensions, COM/OLE, ActiveX controls. Sure they were annoying but they actually did stuff that we just can't do any more. Even start menu folders with more than one entry. It was like each thing you installed could be a plugin for your whole computer, not just an isolated space where you visit sometimes (the iOS model).