
Ask HN: Will non-programmers use Git in the future? - nstj
Git is non-trivial for the average person to use, yet it offers a world of benefit for non-programmers.  When I look at how some of my non-programming friends save, collaborate and modify files, I can see their lives would be enhanced by Git.  So, do you think that much like non-programmers are now familiar with cut, copy and paste that in the future they&#x27;ll be familiar with merge, pull and rebase?  If so (or not) then why?
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Gibbon1
I've brought the subject of version control for non-programming document
control with programmer and non-programmer friends. The result is usually
hostility.

Programmers are taught that storing anything but text based code files under
version control is EVIL. Probably because old version control systems would
corrupt binary files. And because hard drives were small. I've stored firmware
images and project files under version control for two decades myself. Other
programmers I've had to deal with usually froth at the mouth a bit at that.

Non-programmers have trouble grasping that there is a problem with the
standard network drive full of random word docs and exel files 'system'

A more difficult issue is most file formats were never designed with diff
tools in mind[1][2]. There is chicken an egg problem. If you have no
diff/merge tool for a file format. No one thinks to put it under version
control. If it's never under version control, no one is motivated to create
diff/merge tools.

[1] Big one for me has always been CAD files, schematics and PCB layouts. This
however is getting better of late.

[2] I seem to remember reading someone commenting that merging xml based IDE
project files as being particularly painful. (merge changes, fire up the IDE,
IDE decides project is corrupt and helpfully deletes it, @#$^#!)

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nstj
The diff/merge thing is definitely an issue. I can see this being solved in 3
ways:

1) People move to more text based files. Markdown could become ubiquitous. 2)
People create more diff tools 3) Version control tools exist which aren't as
focused on file merges as they are on tracking change. I work with a bunch of
UI designers - if we had a way to track their additions and deletions from a
repo (even if any merge simply required a "pick a file" option) that would be
a huge benefit to our team.

w/r/t the IDE thing just try using Xcode. Open up any project file and BOOM -
merge hell. It decides to add it's own flavor to every .xcodeproj depending on
which version of Xcode you open.

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philiphodgen
Speaking for myself as an international tax lawyer, I have been banging my
head against Github and bleeding heavily.

I can see enormous benefit for myself and my work. If I can start with a
static page HTML to publish an existing 150-page book, I'd be thrilled. I have
every tax treaty as HTML files and I'd love to get that out of Wordpress and
into a static site hosted on Github or elsewhere.

The Github help pages and all the random blog posts are largely gibberish. And
I'm pretty nerdy -- starting with ham radio as a high school kid, Kaypro
computer in 1982, building sites by hand pre-Wordpress.

I defy anyone wanting to set up a simple Jekyll blog on Github pages to do so
without swearing and throwing a shoe across the room.

End of rant. I will be banging my head against the wall again tonight.

~~~
nstj
Tax is an area in which I see _huge_ benefits. I worked on tax at a Big 4 firm
one summer in university (don't ask) and everywhere I looked I could see 10x
benefits which could be gained by version control. Would be interested to chat
more about your ideas - I've been doing a bit of GH Pages/Jekyll/Hugo lately
they can be annoying but powerful if harnessed correctly.

