GitMinutes #31: Mary Rose Cook on Gitlet

In this episode we talk to Mary Rose Cook about her recent experimental implementation of Git in JavaScript: Gitlet. We also talk about all kinds of things around understanding Git, and teaching it.


Link to mp3



Listen to the episode on YouTube

• Mary's homepage
• Mary on GitHub, Twitter
• Mary's speech to new Hacker-Schoolers
• Gitlet
• Gitlet annotated source code
• Learn Git Branching (interactive in the browser)
• Try Git on try.github.io
• Docco, the annotated source documentation tool
• We should have talked about Ungit, but we didn't. Teaser: It will be mentioned in the next episode!

Here's a rough outline of questions asked:

00:00:46 Welcome to the show
00:01:18 Tell us your background
00:03:02 Do you teach Git at Hacker school?
00:03:49 Is Hacker School for programmers who want to get better?
00:04:37 Is Hacker School remote?
00:04:56 What does it cost?
00:06:25 Would you accept anyone who already has a job?
00:07:07 Is the Hacker School concept a common thing?
00:08:33 Any links for those who want to learn more about Hacker School?
00:08:51 What your Git experience?
00:10:09 How were you using Git/GitHub?
00:10:33 When/why did you start planning Gitlet?
00:12:21 What is Gitlet?
00:13:45 Can you install it and use it as a normal Git client?
00:14:38 What does it lack compared to the real Git?
00:16:04 Could you make it production ready if you outsourced the inner operations to libgit2?
00:18:12 Didn't the Learn Git Branching already implement Git in browser?
00:19:37 How did implementing Gitlet change the way you teach GIt?
00:21:08 Would I be a better Git teacher if I taught people the internals instead of the porcelain?
00:26:31 When should people who know Git take the next step to learn it deeper?
00:30:18 Why is it safer to do fetch before you go on an airplane?
00:31:01 Doesn't pull just update current branch while fetch gets everything?
00:32:10 Git fetch vs git pull
00:33:39 How can I get people to avoid merging origin/master to master?
00:39:53 Talk about the repeating patterns you found inside the Git operations
00:47:42 Talk about the beautifully annotated source code of Gitlet
00:52:50 Do you feel a lot of Git internals have leaked out in the user interface?
00:54:58 How can git reset and checkout be the same command for so different things?
00:57:53 Is it the same thing with git reset?
00:59:08 What would be your ideal Git tool?
01:01:54 Any plans for the future?
01:03:21 Anything you'd like to promote?
01:03:40 Where can people find you online?
01:04:00 What is your favorite Git pro tip?
01:04:43 Thank you for coming onto the show!