Best of 2011

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2011. 212 posts.

Tools & Productivity
111

Git can't be made consistent

This post complains about Git lacking eventual consistency. I have a little secret for you: Git can't be made to have eventual consistency. Everybody seems to think the problem is a technical one, of complexity vs. simplicity of implementation. They're wrong. The problem is semantics. Git follows…

115

Git is Inconsistent

Zooko provides a nice example of the problems with most distributed version control systems merge algorithms. He gives an example of a merge situation that most version control systems, including git, get wrong, but that darcs, Codeville, SCCS, and perhaps BitKeeper get correct.