Re: Obscure error/warning/information message from git pull

[John Yates]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:

You cannot help people understand new tools if you start by telling
them to forget everything they've learned.  You should instead build
on what they know, or think they know, gradually replacing that with
new knowledge.

Earlier VCS often had more reified branches.  A phrase that crops up a

lot in git descriptions is "lightweight branching".  This was achieved

by paring back the branch concept - leaving nothing more than the nodes

reachable from a named ref - and by making ref manipulation very common.

When contrasting git to earlier VCS in none of the git intros I have

read have I seen that particular point made.

I have been programming for well over 40 years and have used many VCS.

Personally I always found branching a hurdle in earlier VCS, something

I avoided.  After using git for less than a year I can say emphatically

that I am far happier and more confident working with git's notion of

lightweight branching than with branching in any previous VCS I used

(and I have used a _lot_!)  I have noticed that as I now use branches

actively (both privately and with colleagues) I have a better, deeper

understanding of their concepts and mechanics.  The fact that a single

set of concepts and mechanism scales from the tiny/personal to the

large/project-wide helps one polish one's skills.

/john