Git is useful, but troublesome at times. You can pull to the wrong branch and all of a sudden your nicely organized project is a mess. Of course the prickliness of git is not new news. But people don’t use it for the friendly UI; they use it because most of the time – when it’s not causing you headaches – it’s very helpful.

The main takeaway I have gleaned from the past eight years of using git is not to rush. Rushing through git commands will almost invariably lead to disaster. Better to take your time and work through it deliberately and carefully. If you get into an unintended state, it will help that you are clear on how you got there. That in turn will help you get back to a happier place. Git, when it’s humming along nicely, is a marvelous thing. Best to be careful to keep it on track.

Now please excuse me as I have a very messed up git repository to attend to…

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.