Should we re-imagine git interfaces?
2024-04-14 09:56:00 +07:00 by Mark Smith
The Changelog guys have a great interview episode out featuring Scott Chacon, co-founder of Github. They discuss at length both new git interfaces and the realities of open source licensing. Definitely worth a listen.
My facination with git has only grown the more I've used it. From the early days as a better svn, to the Github revolution, and into building github based workflows. I think there's a big opportunity for git based content workflows but realistically the git UI is currently only for programmers.
Scott's re-imagining of his coding workflows is super interesting. He speaks of completely different ways of thinking about version control, more similar to how Google docs works, with auto-save, the ability to share work in progress via a url before having committed it, and the ability to allocate code from a working space into different branches in parallel. I really like his approach, especially that he's not trying to replace git completely. It's totally okay to use various git interfaces for different uses. That in itself is a pretty powerful idea. Use the UI you want, you can always switch over to the CLI if you need to.
But if we can re-imagine git for programmers, why couldn't we do it for other types of people, for example writers, producers, editors, engineers. So many roles have a different equally valid ways of looking at the world. It might be worth spending time creating new interfaces on top of old software. Many specialised interfaces ontop of git, not as competing software, but as complimentary, might be an interesting path to explore. With a shared git based backend, really cool custom workflows could be assembled for virtually any setting. It might enable people with a diverse set of skills and experience to collaborate together.