Monday, March 10, 2008

Git

Avery Pennarun is going on about Git - Git is the next Unix.

When Unix pipes were invented, suddenly it was trivially easy to do something that used to be really hard: connect the output of one program to the input of the next. Pipes were the fundamental insight that shaped the face of Unix. Programs didn't have to be monolithic.

With git, we've invented a new world where revision history, checksums, and branches don't make your filesystem slower: they make it faster. They don't make your data bigger: they make it smaller. They don't risk your data integrity; they guarantee integrity. They don't centralize your data in a big database; they distribute it peer to peer.

Much like Unix itself, git's actual software doesn't matter; it's the file format, the concepts, that change everything.

Whether they're called git or not, some amazing things will come of this.

I do try to pay attention to people who know more than I do - while it's possible he's sipped some tasty Kool-Aid there might be something to it.

At the very least a new tool for my kit.

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