git-internals-pdf VS learnxinyminutes-docs

For me the Peepcode Git Internals book was a great peek under the hood. I went from "Git has a lot of magical incantations" to "Git is pretty simple and I could probably build a version of it".

I generally recommend the Peepcode Git Internals book. The first half explains the internals of how Git works, and the second half is a command reference.

Once you get the hang of basic Git operations, you should look into how Git works under the hood. Git Internals helped me a lot on this.

❯ git log --graph --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit --all * 150c57d (HEAD -> squash-merge) Squashed commit of the following: | * 535b740 (no-squash-merge) Merge branch 'work-branch' into no-squash-merge |/| | * 1836f1c (work-branch) And more | * 4b84cfe Add more |/ * 16660f8 (main) Add more * 02a154b Initial commit ❯ git cat-file -p no-squash-merge tree 58c1fb22faa444b264e98a5ae4c4ddb07be09697 parent 16660f8b1d1538ed1b55d8533b3ee7feb68e474c parent 1836f1c53221ae701a038bf5ae380770ea911665 author Manuel Odendahl 1653304391 -0400 committer Manuel Odendahl 1653304391 -0400 Merge branch 'work-branch' into no-squash-merge * work-branch: And more Add more squash-merges-considered-harmful on  squash-merge on ☁️ ttc (us-east-1) ❯ git cat-file -p squash-merge tree 58c1fb22faa444b264e98a5ae4c4ddb07be09697 parent 16660f8b1d1538ed1b55d8533b3ee7feb68e474c author Manuel Odendahl 1653304543 -0400 committer Manuel Odendahl 1653304543 -0400 Squashed commit of the following: commit 1836f1c53221ae701a038bf5ae380770ea911665 Author: Manuel Odendahl Date: Mon May 23 07:11:08 2022 -0400 And more commit 4b84cfe11aa51da994448e602e1bc4cc6083d691 Author: Manuel Odendahl Date: Mon May 23 07:11:03 2022 -0400 Add more * ``` {% endraw %} You can see that save that both {% raw %}`squash-merge`{% endraw %} and {% raw %}`no-squash-merge`{% endraw %} point to the exact same tree. The only changed thing is the commit message, and the missing parent in the squash merge. To read more about the underpinnings of git, I can recommend just experimenting with the git command line, and the following resources: - [Building Git by James Coglan](https://shop.jcoglan.com/building-git/) - [Git Internals by Scott Chacon](https://github.com/pluralsight/git-internals-pdf) ## But the history! But Manuel, you say, the history is so much cleaner! To which I counter that it is actually not. If you want to hide the link to the right parent of the non-squash merge (as it is called, the left parent being {% raw %}`main`{% endraw %} ), all you need to do is to hide it. If you use the command-line or a proper tool, use the option to only show first parents. If you only look at the first parent, and configure your git tool to fill in a full log history of the branch into the merge commit message (I personally use the github CLI {% raw %}`gh`{% endraw %} or some git-commit hooks to do it), the squash merge commit is identical to the non squash merge commit. A favorite {% raw %}`git log`{% endraw %} command of mine to quickly look at the history of the main branch, and create a changelog: {% raw %} ```shell > git log --pretty=format:'# %ad %H %s' --date=short --first-parent --reverse # 2022-05-23 02a154bc4f0fa9bca567676d45d136619c076a95 Initial commit # 2022-05-23 16660f8b1d1538ed1b55d8533b3ee7feb68e474c Add more # 2022-05-23 535b740f42e331175f3766c1374116e329a78f7e Merge branch 'work-branch' into no-squash-merge

I often recommend the Peepcode Git Internals book. The first half talks about how Git works internally. The second half is a "how to use Git" tutorial. I think understanding the internals (which aren't really that complicated) can really help to demystify Git.

Conceptually, Git's not really all that complicated. I always recommend people to read the Peepcode Git Internals book (originally $9, now free): https://github.com/pluralsight/git-internals-pdf/blob/master/drafts/peepcode-git.pdf

Check out this page if you haven't yet (alternatively, direct link to the PDF.) I hear it's all good, but the Understanding Git chapter is the one I'd specifically point you to.

I still very much recommend the Peepcode Git Internals book.

https://github.com/pluralsight/git-internals-pdf/releases

> Sure, maybe for some esoteric edge cases, but 5 mins on https://learnxinyminutes.com/ should get you 80% of the way there, and an afternoon looking at big projects or guidelines/examples should you another 18% of the way.

Not for C++, and even for other languages, it's not the language that's hard, it's the idioms.

Python written by experts can be well-nigh incomprehensible (you can save typing out exactly one line if you use list-comprehensions everywhere!).

Someone who knows Javascript well still needs to know all the nooks and crannies of the popular frameworks.

Java with the most popular frameworks (Spring/Boot/etc) can be impossible for a non-Java programmer to reason about (where's all this fucking magic coming from? Where is it documented? What are the other magic words I can put into comments?)

C# is turning into a C++ wannabe as far as comprehension complexity goes.

Right now, the quickest onboarding I've seen by far are Go codebases.

The knowledge tree required to contribute to a codebase can exists on a Deep axis and a Wide axis. C++ goes Deep and Wide. Go and C are the only projects I've seen that goes neither deep nor wide.

Learn x in y minutes: Concise tutorials to learn various programming languages and tools quickly.

StackOverflow's making their own competing LLM for all this stuff.

IMO, one of the biggest problems with the way people use LLMs right now, is that they're being treated as a single oracle: to know Java, it must be trained on examples of Java.

It would be much better if their language comprehension abilities were kept separated from their knowledge (and there are development efforts in this direction), so in this example it would be trained to be able to be able to read a Java tutorial rather than by actually reading a Java tutorial, so when the overall system is asked to write something in Java, the language model within the system decides to do this by opening https://learnxinyminutes.com and combining the user query with the webpage.

I think this will help make the models more compact, which is a benefit all by itself, but it would also mean that knowledge can be updated much more easily.

Someone would have to actually do this in order to see if those benefits are worth the extra cost of having to load a potentially huge a tutorial into the context window, and likewise the extent to which a more compact training set makes the language comprehension worse.

The project was created and is maintained by Adam Bard, but is open sourced with over 1.7k contributors since 2013

https://github.com/adambard/learnxinyminutes-docs

So you have studied programming for at least 5 years, what kinds of programs have you written? Apparently you have already applied your skills, since you have "created a good reputation among developers"? Why a time-frame of 20 years, why not 20 months or 20 weeks? Heck, you can learn a lot in even 20 days!

Once you have learned a few languages, libraries and frameworks then learning new stuff becomes much easier. At that point I'd recommend to check the website https://learnxinyminutes.com. Meanwhile, continue asking questions here and elsewhere :)

An other tip, if you are into computer science and algorithms stuff I recommend you try to solve problems which are posted at https://codegolf.stackexchange.com. You don't need to try solving them in less than X characters, but just to get them solved by any means necessary. And don't take too much bad influence from the posted solutions.

If you want a brief overview, go to https://learnxinyminutes.com/ and look for Javascript. I guess it should be roughly the time it took to learn C++ or possibly less, but JS has its own quirks. Often learning a second language is difficult as the first.

Very light compared to the other resources people have linked for you, but I love https://learnxinyminutes.com/