Return to Answer

Perceptions might be changing over time, on this. Mercurial is very well designed, and so is Git. Mercurial seems to be easier to learn (at least it was for me), and there have been difficulties that I encountered in Git, that I have no parallel for in Mercurial. I tried to learn Python, and Ruby, and got farther, faster with Python. That doesn't mean Python is always and everywhere better than Ruby, or even that it's better for me. It's just what I learned and stuck with. Programmers often make holy wars out of personal preference. Other human beings do that too.

I am a mercurial user who tries to keep an open mind about Git, and I freely admit that it hasn't "become my new favorite thing" to the same extent as Mercurial has. I think Git is really really nice though.

A counter example for GIT/mercurial complexity: Nice GIT support is built into XCode, on Mac. Less easy to use XCode with Mercurial than GIT.

My experience with GIT so far has been that I get confused and lost and need to go consult the documentation more while using it. I believe that a lot of documentation has been written, but nothing that has enabled me to "grok" it. Secondly, I can modify and extend Mercurial easily in Python, and as I am adept in Python, and as anyone really could learn python quickly, it seems an advantage to me. I also know C, and write Python extensions in C, so I suppose some day, if I needed one, I could easily write a Git extension in C.

Ease-of-use is not something that is easy to quantify. It's there, and I don't think it's entirely subjective, but we don't have good objective measurement techniques. What would the units for ease-of-use be? Milli-iPods?

I am not so partisan as to be 100% pro-mercurial, and 100% anti-git. I'm more comfortable on Mercurial right now, on Windows and on Linux, and when I start doing more Mac work, I expect that I'll try to stick with XCode+GIT.

Update 2013: I have now used Mercurial AND GIT long enough to find some features that I wish it had that Git has, such as this question about merge strategies. Really Git is amazing, if difficult to learn, and sometimes maddeningly complex.

Perceptions might be changing over time, on this. Mercurial is very well designed, and so is Git. Mercurial seems to be easier to learn (at least it was for me), and there have been difficulties that I encountered in Git, that I have no parallel for in Mercurial. I tried to learn Python, and Ruby, and got farther, faster with Python. That doesn't mean Python is always and everywhere better than Ruby, or even that it's better for me. It's just what I learned and stuck with. Programmers often make holy wars out of personal preference. Other human beings do that too.

I am a mercurial user who tries to keep an open mind about Git, and I freely admit that it hasn't "become my new favorite thing" to the same extent as Mercurial has. I think Git is really really nice though.

A counter example for GIT/mercurial complexity: Nice GIT support is built into XCode, on Mac. Less easy to use XCode with Mercurial than GIT.

My experience with GIT so far has been that I get confused and lost and need to go consult the documentation more while using it. I believe that a lot of documentation has been written, but nothing that has enabled me to "grok" it. Secondly, I can modify and extend Mercurial easily in Python, and as I am adept in Python, and as anyone really could learn python quickly, it seems an advantage to me. I also know C, and write Python extensions in C, so I suppose some day, if I needed one, I could easily write a Git extension in C.

Ease-of-use is not something that is easy to quantify. It's there, and I don't think it's entirely subjective, but we don't have good objective measurement techniques. What would the units for ease-of-use be? Milli-iPods?

I am not so partisan as to be 100% pro-mercurial, and 100% anti-git. I'm more comfortable on Mercurial right now, on Windows and on Linux, and when I start doing more Mac work, I expect that I'll try to stick with XCode+GIT.

Update 2013: I have now used Mercurial AND GIT long enough to find some features that I wish it had that Git has, such as this question about merge strategies. Really Git is amazing, if difficult to learn, and sometimes maddeningly complex.

Perceptions might be changing over time, on this. Mercurial is very well designed, and so is Git. Mercurial seems to be easier to learn (at least it was for me), and there have been difficulties that I encountered in Git, that I have no parallel for in Mercurial. I tried to learn Python, and Ruby, and got farther, faster with Python. That doesn't mean Python is always and everywhere better than Ruby, or even that it's better for me. It's just what I learned and stuck with. Programmers often make holy wars out of personal preference. Other human beings do that too.

I am a mercurial user who tries to keep an open mind about Git, and I freely admit that it hasn't "become my new favorite thing" to the same extent as Mercurial has. I think Git is really really nice though.

A counter example for GIT/mercurial complexity: Nice GIT support is built into XCode, on Mac. Less easy to use XCode with Mercurial than GIT.

My experience with GIT so far has been that I get confused and lost and need to go consult the documentation more while using it. I believe that a lot of documentation has been written, but nothing that has enabled me to "grok" it. Secondly, I can modify and extend Mercurial easily in Python, and as I am adept in Python, and as anyone really could learn python quickly, it seems an advantage to me. I also know C, and write Python extensions in C, so I suppose some day, if I needed one, I could easily write a Git extension in C.

Ease-of-use is not something that is easy to quantify. It's there, and I don't think it's entirely subjective, but we don't have good objective measurement techniques. What would the units for ease-of-use be? Milli-iPods?

I am not so partisan as to be 100% pro-mercurial, and 100% anti-git. I'm more comfortable on Mercurial right now, on Windows and on Linux, and when I start doing more Mac work, I expect that I'll try to stick with XCode+GIT.

Perceptions might be changing over time, on this. Mercurial is very well designed, and so is Git. Mercurial seems to be easier to learn (at least it was for me), and there have been difficulties that I encountered in Git, that I have no parallel for in Mercurial. I tried to learn Python, and Ruby, and got farther, faster with Python. That doesn't mean Python is always and everywhere better than Ruby, or even that it's better for me. It's just what I learned and stuck with. Programmers often make holy wars out of personal preference. Other human beings do that too.

I am a mercurial user who tries to keep an open mind about Git, and I freely admit that it hasn't "become my new favorite thing" to the same extent as Mercurial has. I think Git is really really nice though.

A counter example for GIT/mercurial complexity: Nice GIT support is built into XCode, on Mac. Less easy to use XCode with Mercurial than GIT.

My experience with GIT so far has been that I get confused and lost and need to go consult the documentation more while using it. I believe that a lot of documentation has been written, but nothing that has enabled me to "grok" it. Secondly, I can modify and extend Mercurial easily in Python, and as I am adept in Python, and as anyone really could learn python quickly, it seems an advantage to me. I also know C, and write Python extensions in C, so I suppose some day, if I needed one, I could easily write a Git extension in C.

Ease-of-use is not something that is easy to quantify. It's there, and I don't think it's entirely subjective, but we don't have good objective measurement techniques. What would the units for ease-of-use be? Milli-iPods?

I am not so partisan as to be 100% pro-mercurial, and 100% anti-git. I'm more comfortable on Mercurial right now, on Windows and on Linux, and when I start doing more Mac work, I expect that I'll try to stick with XCode+GIT.

Update 2013: I have now used Mercurial AND GIT long enough to find some features that I wish it had that Git has, such as this question about merge strategies. Really Git is amazing, if difficult to learn, and sometimes maddeningly complex.

A counter example for GIT/mercurial complexity: Nice GIT support is built into XCode, on Mac. Less easy to use XCode with Mercurial than GIT.

My experience with GIT so far has been that I get confused using it. I believe that a lot of documentation has been written, but nothing that has enabled me to "grok" it.

I am not so partisan as to be 100% pro-mercurial, and 100% anti-git. I'm more comfortable on Mercurial right now, on Windows and on Linux, and when I start doing more Mac work, I expect that I'll try to stick with XCode+GIT.

Perceptions might be changing over time, on this. Mercurial is very well designed, and so is Git. Mercurial seems to be easier to learn (at least it was for me), and there have been difficulties that I encountered in Git, that I have no parallel for in Mercurial. I tried to learn Python, and Ruby, and got farther, faster with Python. That doesn't mean Python is always and everywhere better than Ruby, or even that it's better for me. It's just what I learned and stuck with. Programmers often make holy wars out of personal preference. Other human beings do that too.

I am a mercurial user who tries to keep an open mind about Git, and I freely admit that it hasn't "become my new favorite thing" to the same extent as Mercurial has. I think Git is really really nice though.

A counter example for GIT/mercurial complexity: Nice GIT support is built into XCode, on Mac. Less easy to use XCode with Mercurial than GIT.

My experience with GIT so far has been that I get confused and lost and need to go consult the documentation more while using it. I believe that a lot of documentation has been written, but nothing that has enabled me to "grok" it. Secondly, I can modify and extend Mercurial easily in Python, and as I am adept in Python, and as anyone really could learn python quickly, it seems an advantage to me. I also know C, and write Python extensions in C, so I suppose some day, if I needed one, I could easily write a Git extension in C.

Ease-of-use is not something that is easy to quantify. It's there, and I don't think it's entirely subjective, but we don't have good objective measurement techniques. What would the units for ease-of-use be? Milli-iPods?

I am not so partisan as to be 100% pro-mercurial, and 100% anti-git. I'm more comfortable on Mercurial right now, on Windows and on Linux, and when I start doing more Mac work, I expect that I'll try to stick with XCode+GIT.