Git turns 20: A Q&A with Linus Torvalds
Pretty sure he's older than that. And calling people names isn't nice!
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git.
Linus Torvalds, 2007-06-14
Git’s unconventional and decentralized design—nowadays ubiquitous and seemingly obvious—was revolutionary at the time,
Of course, there's more innovation in git than being DVC but the decentralized nature wasn't revolutionary.
It was funny when I started using bzr and then git, I kept being told "it's a DVC, which is a different way to work that takes some getting used to", and I was puzzled as it felt very familiar to me. Then I looked up DVCs and found out that Sun's Teamware that I'd used for a decade was also a DVC. It was actually a return to familiar and comfortable workflows after a brief period using abominations like Perforce and Clearcase. I'm so glad they've been largely replaced. Git may not be perfect, but it's better than those in any use cases I have had.
Yeah - the decentralized nature isn't that big of a deal, most people treat it like it's centralized anyway...
The most amazing thing about git was they way they track changes (file contents rather than names) which allows it to branch and merge almost effortlessly. Search for "SVN Tree Conflict" for an example of what I'm talking about. Oh, you renamed a file that you modified on a branch? Your life is hell now.
The best thing about SVN was Trac.
Oh man, I'd forgotten about trac!
It's still around, Git compatible and all. I have fond memories using it with svn on a small startup as our development hub back in the day.
Fuck the acronym "SVN" rings a bell and I know I've used it somewhere, but I can't for the life of me remember and now it's killing me, lol
"at 20 years old" is usually used for humans. For a second, I thought "no way Linus is younger than me"
Also, it's GitHub celebrating. That's as if PornHub celebrated 40000 years of porn.
What makes you think only GitHub is celebrating?
I didn't say "only"
Linus: Are you going to say the AI word?
I’m not going to say the AI word, unless you want me to.
No, no, no.
Hahah