Re: Considering teaching plumbing to users harmful

["Sean Kelley" <sean.v.kelley@gmail.com>]

Hi

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 5:32 PM, Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> In general, I find that people are more willing to listen to "we have
> a more powerful way of doing things", if you can first give them the
> equivalent of the "dumb and stupid" way that they are used to doing
> things so they can switch to the new tool right away without too much
> of a steep learning curve; they will then switch to the more
> advanced/powerful workflows at their own pace.  Other people may have
> other pedgogical techniques, but I find mine to work fairly well.
>
> Regards,
>
>                                                - Ted



When one has 100 users in a company using a DVCS, you really need some
sort of simplified workflow documented and taught.  Not everyone who
writes code is particularly keen on the vagaries of a VCS' commands.
I know that must be shocking to this audience the GIT list, but it is
very very true.  They don't give a crap what sort of weird command
combination one can pull out of the 100 or so commands when you type
git-<tab> at a bash prompt.  They just want the damn thing to behave
in a somewhat friendly fashion.  They want to check in their code and
get on with software development and not over analyzing how many ways
they can do the same command.   In my experience, what Ted is
suggesting is the only way to handle it.  Most developers just want it
to work and focus on debugging their project.  Never expect your users
to have the same interest as you in VCS.

Sean