On 11/07/2021 14:23, Sergey Organov wrote:
Martin <git@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Because humans are more about the "things".
The way we interact is more ofter derived from the object, than the
object being purposefully made for an interaction?
I don't see it, at least not in the usual human conversations. When one
means an action to be performed, they name the action and then the object:
"Play football", "Go home", "Set your thoughts straight", "Wash your hands"
No?
1) the order does not necessarily indicate the significance.
2) That is English for you. Afaik there are languages which have the
verb at the end.
Also, in German it is perfectly fine (though not very common) to use
"object verb subject". Fussball spielen wir.
Even in English you have: Woe is me. Yes "woe" is the Subject.
Anyway, it's more the consistency that matters, not particular
convention. Git problem is that is has no convention at all. "Just do
what feels right today" seems to be the motto.
Well human languages are not as rigid as computer languages.
Finally, the problem for this particular discussion is that if we decide
that it's rather:
git <object> <command>
that is the way to go, that I'm pretty fine with as well, we should
simply *obsolete "git switch" right away*, rather than spending time
improving its now almost useless documentation.
Actually then we would end up with
git branch switch
git tag switch // detach
git commit switch // detach
Well it could be
git worktree switch
(ignoring the effect on the index / and bringing "worktree" into a
single worktree setup)
The problem is, that IMHO forcing either verb or noun, ends up with
grouping commands in ways that create unnecessary dividers between
related actions. (Continued, next paragraph)
From that POV, for the commands you mentioned, "git bisect" is probably
fine, whereas "git worktree", and "git remote" should better be split to
operations on them, e.g.:
git new remote
git new worktree
This is what I mean with dividers.
There may be some relation between "new branch", "new tag"
But I can see none between "new branch" and "new remote" and "new
worktree". None at all. Yet I can see relations between different things
you can do with a worktree.
I also think that, switching to a commit or branch are to closely
related, and should not be divided.
(There were even suggestions that switching to a commit, is an unnamed
branch)
As I said, I have not read any research paper on that topic.
But to me, it severely disrupts the intuitive aspect.
Once that is regularized, we may as well consider allowing for inverse
order of the first 2 arguments, by making
git new remote
git remote new
the synonyms.
Having even more ways to do one and the same thing....
Python was aiming to have one obvious way of doing every single thing...
Did it succeed in that, I wonder? Maybe this aim is only good in theory?
We are way away from having "one single way". But aiming for the extreme
opposite may not be any smarter.
While there is nothing wrong with going our own way in the end, maybe we
should look around before?
How do other vcs do it?
svn has at least status and log, which I would consider nouns, the way
they are used. And it has verbs too.
hg as "branches", "files" which are nouns. And "log".
And it has verbs too.
So there seems to be a pattern to using "mixed" verbs and nouns.
