Because you are accustomed to centralized version control systems that do not punish you for doing something that dumb, and refuse to learn new tools when you are forced to use them.
Anyone checking in 500MB artifacts into git is almost certainly refusing to use git correctly.
It is like somebody who grows up using hand tools, gets handed a power drill, then tries to use it like a pry-bar. You should not use a screwdriver as a pry-bar, that is an abuse of the tool. Nevertheless, many people abuse screwdrivers as pry-bars because conventional hand screwdrivers tolerate this practice.
After a few days please review that comment of yours. Could anybody in an internet conversation really know all details of your constraints?
Maybe, maybe(!) there is an argument were you would need to version huge binaries which you could generate out of the same already versioned sources, but even if there is, there are methods to backup huge blobs, and git is simply not one of them.
> Could anybody in an internet conversation really know all details of your constraints?
No - nor do they need to. But everybody on the internet could just assume that _I_ know them and refrain from saying that "I'm doing something dumb" and "refuse to learn new tools". So I'd also ask you to review the comment of yours - you're doing the same thing - you imply that "Maybe, maybe(!)" there might be a use-case, so as a matter of fact you doubt I did review and choose my tools.
The "idiot" part of course is wrong. But if you understand a technology and then use it for something it is explicitly bad at, than it's objectively a bad idea. The chance is very low that you would not be able to solve a binary sharing/backup problem with another tool that's made for these tasks.
You're putting words in my mouth that I did never say. I'm not blaming git for anything nor do I consider git a bad tool. I'm using git for practically all my versioned data. I just don't consider it the tool that needs to solve all cases where I - legitimately or not - want to version data. A good craftsman should have more tools at his disposal than just a blunt hammer.
So you can doubt my use case but I consider it severely impolite to pretend that you know better. Actually you're quite nicely illustrating one of the points in the article.
It's all discussed further down in the tread, and I gave as much info as I could. I'm not at liberty to discuss details in public - nor do I need to.
Further down on the page somebody else also mentions a legitimate use case to version-control large binaries (needed for comparison). Another use-case I've seen is version control rendered video output and keep the comments and metadata attached to the versions. Works just fine with SVN, fails hard in git. Yet another use case for a system that handles binaries better is what the rubygems folks do - they vendor all gems that a particular version of rubygems.org depends on so they can bootstrap without rubygems.org being available. They built a custom solution using multiple git repos which works for their use-case (it's been discussed on rubygems). Arguably, having a system where versioning large amounts of binary data works better than in git would have prevented that issue.
So there are use-cases that are ill-suited for what git can and cannot do - and just because I say I have one I get to be called a bad craftsman by someone who doesn't know the least bit about what I'm trying to do?
And now you're saying that I engage in a flamewar when I point out that I consider that an insult? Please note that I have not insulted Crito.
The real explanation is that someone would want to version binary data. Like say, images. The parent poster claimed that anyone who would want to version binary data is an idiot.
Anyone checking in 500MB artifacts into git is almost certainly refusing to use git correctly.
It is like somebody who grows up using hand tools, gets handed a power drill, then tries to use it like a pry-bar. You should not use a screwdriver as a pry-bar, that is an abuse of the tool. Nevertheless, many people abuse screwdrivers as pry-bars because conventional hand screwdrivers tolerate this practice.