[darcs-users] [Haskell-cafe] Re: poll: how can we help you contribute to darcs?

[John Goerzen]

Ashley Moran wrote:
> On Aug 03, 2008, at 3:36 pm, David Bremner wrote:
> 
>> I think this view is probably coloured by your background in web
>> development. I have used git for about a year now, and never visited
>> GitHub.  I'm not saying you have to like git, but it does have other
>> features other than a snazzy web site.
> 
> Hi David
> 
> I think I gave the wrong impression there.  After all, I use darcs  
> despite it not having a snazzy website!  What I mean is that git usage  
> has snowballed since GitHub was released, so people are clearly  
> attracted to the website first, and the SCM second.  It's a bit like  
> the way Rails created thousands of Ruby programmers by association,  
> many of them with no idea what Ruby was all about, just a vague notion  
> that Rails could solve their problem.

I know of exactly 0 programmers that use Git because of GitHub.

I have interacted with exactly 1 project that used GitHub.

I know of many, many programmers that use Git.

Git people are choosing Git for other reasons.  I've spelled out some of
the reasons I chose it before; I could bore you with URLs if you like ;-)

Git is a really nice DVCS.  That has nothing to do with the presence of
one particular website.

> I tend to very stubbornly work the other way... choose the tool I  
> think works best with very little regard for its momentum, unless of  
> course it clearly has none.  Hence my love of darcs and recent  
> interest in Haskell.  (I'll figure it out, one day!)

Haskell has momentum, I swear!

> There's also discussion on darcs-users that a Haskell implementation  
> of Git would finally settle the "Haskell is too slow" debate.  Now I  
> think if the world is going to use git, a better implementation would  
> be a good thing (I know a developer who got VERY frustrated trying to  
> program against it).  Personally I think the developer time would be  
> better invested in fixing darcs bugs and improving its performance.

Yes, I am not sure the world needs a reimplemented Git.  As a user, I
would say, "what's the benefit?"  I don't see one.  That's an awful lot
of work.

As a developer, yes Git's internals are, shall we say, inconsistent.
But what do I care?  Git's interface is a shell tool, and I can use any
programming language I want to work with it.  I've already done so with
sh, Haskell, and (ugh) Ruby.

-- John