I am convinced that the vast majority of professionals simply don't bother to remember and, ESPECIALLY WITH GIT, just look stuff up every single time the workflow deviates from their daily usage.
At this point perhaps a million person-years have been sacrificed to the semantically incoherent shit UX of git. I have loathed git from the beginning but there's effectively no other choice.
That said, the OP's commands are useful, I am copying them (because obviously I won't ever memorize them).
> I am convinced that the vast majority of professionals simply don't bother to remember and, ESPECIALLY WITH GIT, just look stuff up every single time the workflow deviates from their daily usage.
I wrote a cheat sheet in my notes of common commands, until they stuck in my head and I haven't needed it now for a decade or more. I also lean heavily on aliases and "self-documenting" things in my .bashrc file. Curious how others handle it. A search every time I need to do something would be too much friction for me to stand.
I just wrapped these 5 diagnostic commands into a Claude Code skill. Because the post is useful but I'm not sure I can remember these git commands all the time... https://github.com/yujiachen-y/codebase-recon-skill
That could work if Claude Code made the code changes, but if you made them and only asked Claude to commit them, how does it know "why" you made those changes? Does it have access to your bug tracking system, for example?
indeed, I held off for a while but finally caved because I got sick of seeing commits with `git commit -m .` littered in there. These are personal projects so I'm the only one dev-ing on them, but still so nice to have commit messages.
I refuse to have alises and other custom commands. Either it is useful for everyone and so I make a change to the upstream project (I have never done this), or it won't exist next time I change my system so there is no point. I do have some custom tools that I am working on that haven't been released yet, but the long term goal is either delete them or release them to more people who will use them so I know it will be there next time I use a different system.
> I refuse to have alises and other custom commands.
I am the same way, and have caught much flack for it over the years.
But when I sit down at a foreign system (foreign in the sense that I haven't used it before) because something is broken and my help was requested, I don't have any need to lean on aliases.
I worked with someone once that had a very impressive bashrc, and it was very effective for them... on their workstation. Plop them in front of a production system, they can't even remember how to remount / rw because they've been using an alias for so long.
This is also why I learned vi, having started with emacs 30 years ago initially, as it was first taught to me. I know it'll be there, and I know how to use it.
it's a tradeoff for sure. With dig especially I can't ever remember the normal syntax because I have aliases and scripts for things. I feel the aliases are wroth it since I'm on my own machine(s) 99.5% of the time, but it does suck to be handicapped
Absolutely, and I think aliases are great and should be used. I, personally, worked in a handful of environments that made me realize it was infeasible to lean on aliases and helper scripts. Like bluGill said, if I need it in a real way, I'll try and upstream it.
What I resent is someone telling me how to use a computer. I've got that bit mostly down at this point.
> At this point perhaps a million person-years have been sacrificed to the semantically incoherent shit UX of git. I have loathed git from the beginning but there's effectively no other choice.
Yes! We mostly wouldn’t tolerate the complexity and the terrible UX of a tool we use everyday--but there's enough Stockholm Syndrome out there where most of us are willing to tolerate it.
Unless you're aware that such powerful commands are something you need once in a blue moon, and then you're grateful that the tool is flexible enough to allow them in the first place.
Git may be sharp and unwieldy, but it's also one of the decreasing amount of tools we still use - the trend of turning tools into toys consumed the regular user market and is eating into tech software as well.
Tools, done right, are a joy to use and allow you to be expressive and precise while also saving you labor. Good tools promote mastery and creative inquiry.
Git is NOT that.
Git is something you use to get stuff done, until it becomes an irritating obstacle course of incidental complexity.
Why should there be tolerance? You look it up once, then write a script or an alias if it's part of your workflow. Or made a note if it's worth that. I use magit and I get quick action and contextual help at every step of my interaction with git.
That's why I really like lazygit, I don't need to remember much because all the keymaps are shown in the UI. I like those kinds of Ui like whichkeys in neovim, or helix, or Doom Emacs.
I just use my ide integrations for git. I absolutely love the way pycharm/jetbrains does it, and I'm starting to be ok with how vscode does. Remembering git commands besides the basics is just pointless. If I need to do something that the gui doesn't handle, I'll look it up and put it in a script.
>I am convinced that the vast majority of professionals simply don't bother to remember and, ESPECIALLY WITH GIT, just look stuff up every single time the workflow deviates from their daily usage
Partly that, but for me at least, I have a bunch of simple bash scripts and aliases for things I do frequently. Git makes this really easy because you can set aliases for lots of custom commands in the .gitconfig file.
I don't even think git cli UX is that bad. Didn't git pioneer this sub-command style? Much better than like e.g. ffmpeg. Sure some aspects are confusing. I still don't understand why `checkout` is both for changing branches and clearing uncommitted changes. But overall I think the tool is amazing. I've not observed a bug in git once.
> I still don't understand why `checkout` is both for changing branches and clearing uncommitted changes.
Because `checkout` is for getting the working directory to the state of a specific revision. Which both means switching branches (which are just pointer to revisions) and clearing changes (and get back to the starting revision). In both cases, you "check out" the version of the file at a specific commit or HEAD.
I think this is where LLMs shine. I experience the same difficulty with a lot of command line tools, .e.g find is a mystery to me after all these years. Whatever the syntax is, it just doesn't stick in my memory. Since recently I just tell the model what search I want and it gives me the command.
FWIW I too was once a "memorised a few commands and that was it" type of dev, then I read 3 chapters of the Git book https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2 (well really two, the first chapter was a "these are things you already know") and wow did my life with git change.
I’ve recently been looking into some tools that provide quick or painless help like pop up snippets with descriptions and cheat sheets, got any recommendations?
It sort of reminds me of when palm-pilots (circa late-90's early 2000's) used short-hand gestures for stylus-writing characters. For a short while people's handwriting on white-boards looked really bizarre. Except now we're talking about using weird language to conserve AI tokens.
Maybe it's better to accept a higher token burn-rate until things get better? I'd rather not get used to AI jive-talk to get stuff done.
I got some too. Obviously the principles behind quantum computing are perfectly sound. It's just those pesky engineering obstacles.
One of the companies around today or in the near future will be the one who makes it work at a practical scale. It will have enormous impact, but I think it will be a slow-burn kind of thing as making effective use of quantum computers will take a long time to evolve, IMHO.
Unfortunately, Google and IBM are also working on this stuff and they have deep pockets. They might do it, but even if they don't they may very well decide to acquire whoever does.
These stocks (IONQ, RGTI, QBTS, XNDU) are a sort of thinking-man's LOTTO ticket which will have its numbers called anytime within the next 5 to 20 years (probably closer to 20). I think they're worthwhile to hold in affordable quantities to see what happens. It might hit big, or it might fizzle out for a variety of reasons. There will also be some hype-driven market sugar-rushes along the way that are an opportunity to rake in a modest profit. This has happened already with IONQ, RGTI and QBTS earlier this year. It will certainly happen again when the patagonia-vest people get jazzed about something.
Like 95% of my investing money ends up going to fairly-low-risk ETFs like VOO or VTI, not too different than from an index fund.
Still, that last five percent is more or less my gambling money. I put it into individual stocks with the hope they get huge. Sometimes it works out well, like when I bought $700 of Nvidia in 2022. Sometimes it goes badly, like when I bought a bunch of Sears stock with the hope they'd bounce back.
I think I'm still technically "up" with my gambling money, though it's in the budget of "stuff I'd be ok going to zero".
Well, if it comes out of your gambling budget and you treat it as entertainment, then there's nothing wrong with that. At least the expected average payout is way better most other forms of gambling.
I think the VC/investor community needs to take A LOT of blame here. They've created an insane rush to financialize everything to moon at the drop of a hat.
I love it too. It's a really positive aspect of AI. And it's NOT because it "takes jobs away from developers". In this case, there was NO (professional/career) developer and NO software product focused on what this guy did.
We've long made fun of excel-jockeys getting carried away with VBA, but they came into being because engaging with turgid and expensive software companies to do important but small jobs was such a pain in the ass. This is the start of a new era, and while I am sure we're going to see some wild fiascos, it is a move in the right direction for people that need to solve problems with computers.
There's a difference between "posturing" for show and actually "preparing for war".
They're wise to the fact that "the Stable Genius" isn't going to try anything violent with Denmark/Greenland, but they still want to prevent him thinking about just stealing territory "peacefully."
That's not true. Ukraine was well prepared, they had spent since 2014 on this because they knew the day would come. That's the only reason the country still exists.
I'm pretty sure Ukraine were taking the Russian preparations as what they were. And they had plans to counter them. Proven by the fact that Putin's 3 days war has now surpassed the Russian involvement in WWII.
The assumption was - and still is - that the USA wasn't posturing either.
We (and I realize I obviously don't speak for all of Europe but I have my finger on the pulse in many places here) are also not assuming that when Trump is gone the USA will go back to normal.
USA cannot go back to normal. The internal damage / changeover is massive - everybody disagreing with current administration policies has either been removed or departed - whether in health or defense (I'm sorry, War) or science or education or other departments.
And even if they did go back to normal for the next presidency - why trust it? Their entire political system is set up so that the winds can change entirely every 4 years.
If the people voted Trump in to office twice, it’ll happen again. It’s a divided country where propaganda has a strong hold.
Useful stability can be achieved again, either “back to normal” as mentioned elsewhere in this thread or “forward to something different but better (and not crap like it is now)”, but it is going to take at least a few terms, maybe several. Even if it did happen more quickly, it will take that long for those of us on the outside to trust it, reputational damage like this can not be undone quickly.
They will not go back to anything resembling the old normal :-/.
Trump & his cronies have obliterated the Overton Window so hard you cannot even tell which side of the house the window used to be in.
The successors for Trump will be worse, because they will not be senile old men who sabotage themselves, and the checks-and-balances against this millenia-old crap have now been pretty well dismantled :-/.
We are entering an age where US will behave like a weird sort of Russia#2, run by oligarchs.
In a way it was of course always run (or influenced) by oligarchs, but nothing like the scale we are going to see from now on.
But.. look at the history of US, the last hundred or so years, and how they behaved south of Mexico (I am not particularly calling out US here, of course Europe has also been bad).
This is absurd in the extreme. In actual war there is absolutely no possibility of success for Denmark, even with the help of allies. Failure to capitulate results in nothing but death and destruction with no hope of strategic gain to begin with. What you are likely experiencing is a modern belief that screaming and shouting will bring popular diplomatic pressure to bear on the opponent, thus arresting their actions.
There was similar tough talk in 1940 and Denmark lasted 6 hours. Without capitulation the country would have been razed. But surrender saw it able to keep some level of control and thus extricate the Jewish population in relative safety which would not otherwise have been possible.
No, what is absurd is the number of people that can't wait to go back to a world with endless wars of conquest. We already know what that looks like.
If you have never seen war up close then I am happy to forgive you, but trust me, in 'actual war' there is no possibility of success for anybody, there are only degrees of damage and degrees of grief and illusions to the contrary are focused on the few people that manage to get out of war with the profits in their pockets. Everybody else suffers.
I'm sorry but you are not interacting with the rational suppositions of posters in various threads here. No one is arguing for a war except you. People are explaining to you the strategic reality and you are espousing rhetoric that I honestly can't decipher.
1. Denmark cannot win militarily
2. You are suggesting Denmark would not capitulate and indeed enter into a state of war
Denmark cannot win militarily, but can the US? What war has the US won recently? They're great at destroying things, but not at winning. There's nothing for them to win in Greenland. It's an indefensible chunk of ice. They can kill the people who live there, but what would that gain them?
Meanwhile they stand to lose a lot. There have been many NATO exercises that showed US aircraft carriers to be vulnerable to European submarines, so they can't park their fleet too close. They have to fly between NATO members Canada and Iceland. How would soldiers feel if they're forced to fight all their former allies? How would the US citizens feel?
You think there's a game theory scenario in the book where France launches a nuclear weapon at mainland USA over a land dispute between them and Denmark?
France has the only first strike nuclear doctrine in the world, with the specific policy of shooting nukes to "protect it's vital interests", a term Macron has recently clarified "has a European dimension".
Make of that what you will, but if I were you I wouldn't go around poking the hornets nest that has an explicit sign "these hornets will sting" attached to it.
See, this is what is so dumb about this: you are treating this as if it is some kind of board game. It is exactly why the US gets into these messes over and over again, the incredible overconfidence that because they somehow have battlefield superiority they can do whatever they want. You are exemplifying precisely where the rot in the USA is located.
> I'm sorry but you are not interacting with the rational suppositions of posters in various threads here.
The one thing that is common about 'rationalists' is that they share a lot of the viewpoints with other ra*ists and that's not the world many of us want to live in.
Sure, you can take it. But can you afford to take it?
The answer is most likely you can't. And so far every attempt to show John Mearheimers superiority has been the equivalent of 'just relax and enjoy it'.
Guess what? We won't. Alliances are made voluntarily, not through conquest.
> In an actual war there is absolutely no possibility of success for Denmark, even with the help of allies.
Assume that Denmark's strategic success criteria is not "win up-front battles with US armed forces". And that they understand the difference between "lost battle(s), got occupied" and "nation permanently removed from existence".
Also, US service members are not slavishly loyal Clone Troopers. That I've heard, the greatest fear of most senior American officers is that the CIC will issue orders sufficiently offensive to the lower ranks that they will be disobeyed at scale.
So your supposition is strategic national defense game theory should be based on hoping for a mutiny from the opposite side? Is rationality dead? What are you lot talking about.
No. But Denmark lacks the armored divisions, bomber wings, carrier task forces, etc. to pursue a "we've got a bigger stick" strategy. And undermining your opponent's will to fight was routine back when the Old Testament was written.
> Is rationality dead?
By a couple accounts I've heard, desperate senior US officers used the pre-February situation with Iran to lure Trump's attention away from Denmark/Greenland.
(If you want rational behavior from the current POTUS - um, yes, my deepest condolences, but...)
Keep going. Denmark capitulated and suffered relatively little damage. Austria capitulated, and what happened to them? Czechoslovakia capitulated, and how did that work out for them? Sure, neither suffered losses in the initial invasion. Their people still got to die fighting for Hitler, though. They still got bombed and bombed and bombed and then invaded by the allies, though.
And, Norway did fight back, and lost. How much worse did that work out for Norway than for Denmark?
Ukraine is rapidly becoming one of the hardest countries in Europe. They fought a former superpower to a stand still and are innovating on weapons systems and integration at a pace that makes LM's skunkworks look like sloths. And on a budget that is insane.
Just like Ukraine, Europe does not want war, doesn't want to see their kids die for the umpteenth time so that fat cats can line their pockets. But if push comes to shove we would be absolutely capable of doing it, either outright or by slower guerilla like means. Bombing shit is easy. Taking over territory and holding it is much, much harder, infinitely more so if the population holds a grudge. Note that the Dutch resistance killed more German soldiers than the army ever did. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, lots of countries in Europe. Examples aplenty.
They almost certainly did not. They likely just hired a cheap contractor to get their service up, and went with it when "it worked".
The contractor (who was certainly incompetent) probably looked at a bunch of nightmarishly complex identity API's and said "F** it!", combine that with being grossly underpaid and you get stuff like this.
It's a bad situation, of course, and involving threatening lawyers makes it even more ugly. But I can understand how a very small business (knowing nothing about IT other that what their incompetent contractor told them) might get really offended and scared shitless by some rando giving them a 30-day deadline, reporting them to authorities, and demanding that they contact all affected customers.
At this point perhaps a million person-years have been sacrificed to the semantically incoherent shit UX of git. I have loathed git from the beginning but there's effectively no other choice.
That said, the OP's commands are useful, I am copying them (because obviously I won't ever memorize them).
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