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0 pointsCerthas1y ago0 comments

I agree that the change isn't of comparable magnitude. But JJ changes the user facing conceptual structure of version control. It unifies working directory, stash, index and commit, and replaces them with a single thing. And it shows that all existing git workflows can efficiently be constructed on this much simpler conceptual basis.

In my mind this demonstrates convincingly that gits conceptual model carries unnecessary incidental complexity. Within a fixed complexity budget jj absolutely does allow new things to happen.

I also don't really see any workflow examples that truly suffer under jj, so I don't think it's just another trade-off. It's a real substantial improvement. If it wasn't it wouldn't be making headway against gits network effects.

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bayindirh1y ago

From what I understand, all these different places/things (working directory, stash, index and commit) confuses, and comes across unnecessary to some people. They want a simpler solution, and less mental load during version control phase of their software, that's understandable.

In my experience software developers come in two flavors. a) Developers who want to understand all the pieces they work with and have the desire to deep-dive into them b) Developers who write and commit code. They think that former part is their job and care about it. They don't care after it leaves their machine (in the sense of "I give box to machine it magically integrates").

IMHO, jj is very enticing for the latter camp, and that's not a bad thing. Not all of us are passion programmers/developers, and some are don't want to think about beyond their immediate realm. I respect these people. But, again, from my perspective, jj doesn't make sense for me. It's useful alright, but I actively use index, commit and stash very naturally. I might be good at understanding it because Eclipse has a great git integration which makes everything super workable and understandable, and I'd never change a power tool like git to something "push button, magic happens" class of tool.

jj might be very conductive to more complex workflows by removing some complexities, but unifying my stash, staging area and index is not something I want to be dome to my workflow for example.

Some trade-offs make great headways into networks because a large part of that network is silently suffering without being aware, and the trade-offs are worth it. See Rust for example. People accept 5x mental load and 10x compile times for memory safety. Same for jj. People accept a much simpler interface because it makes their painful workflows "push button, magic happens" levels of simplicity. Or, the people who like jj work under time pressure and want to remove a time-sink from their workflows, again understandable and respectable.

Having something like "jj" is not a bad thing. What I'm squarely against is "git is dead, new king is jj. Now move to your new kingdom and worship jj" mentality.

do_not_redeem1y ago

I think you have it backwards. jj is absolutely for "a) Developers who want to understand their tools". The simpler data model opens up new workflows that weren't possible before.

Unifying concepts is not taking away any expressive power. It just makes the system as a whole simpler to reason about.

I think it's a similar step up in power as moving from Windows to Linux. On Windows, to toy with the system at all you need to set up a C++ project and dig through win32 API docs and deal with opening/closing handles and void* pointers just to change anything, so I rarely bothered. On Linux everything is right there in the file system so there's almost no friction to changing things. You can do anything imaginable in a minute or two with just a shell script.

In Linux, Everything Is A File. In Jujutsu, Everything Is A Commit.

steveklabnik1y ago

You’re making an understandable mistake. Jj being simpler doesn’t mean it is less powerful. It means it’s more powerful. This happens very rarely, but it is the case here. Removing the index and stash as unique concepts doesn’t mean that their use cases disappear: they gain power, because you can use any tool that works on a commit on your “index” or “stash” because they’re also just commits.

I actually like git’s CLI. I never understood why people wanted a simplified git. I’m never going back to git from jj. It’s just better.

ziml771y ago

Being in group #1 does not mean that I want to interact with every system at the lowest possible levels. I want to interact in ways that fit how I work, not to fit how I work to the ways the system works.

> "git is dead, new king is jj. Now move to your new kingdom and worship jj"

No one is saying this. If you feel like people getting excited about Jujutsu is them telling you that you must love it, that's on you. The fact that it is built on top of Git means that even if others are using Jujutsu, you are not forced to when working in the same repos.

stouset1y ago

I was a git power user. I am comfortable with and understand the index, stash, rebases, the reflog, and all the rest. I have written a git implementation.

I have converted to jj and will never go back. It is simpler and more powerful.

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