T3 Stack creator Theo Browne argues Git is no longer the correct primitive for development and calls for an overhaul
Nick Dobos compared Git's massive institutional momentum to email.
3. Worktrees are an abomination
We need source control that makes more assumptions about our file systems. Why do we have to implement copy on write ourselves? Why can't I "check out" the same branch in 2 places at the same time? Why do I have to put so much energy in keeping my worktrees updated to main?
We've been taken for fools. The current worktree implementation in git should be ignored entirely. Our agents deserve better.
Theo - t3.gg@theo2. Commits are a bad primitive. Branches are worse. jj gets much closer to "right" here. Work is constantly staged as it is done. Snapshots are taken when you run any command at all. "commits" force us to think about our history at all times. That's stupid and a waste of our time. We should be able to just edit the code. We can worry about how it is "tracked" later.
4. Source control shouldn't require a "real os" + file system.
In a world with tools like "just-bash", it's silly that we need a full kernel and file system to even interface with git. Reading and updating files should be doable with simple API calls.
Theo - t3.gg@theo3. Worktrees are an abomination We need source control that makes more assumptions about our file systems. Why do we have to implement copy on write ourselves? Why can't I "check out" the same branch in 2 places at the same time? Why do I have to put so much energy in keeping my worktrees updated to main? We've been taken for fools. The current worktree implementation in git should be ignored entirely. Our agents deserve better.
@theo All 3 points are correct and solid, yet I fear the institutional momentum of git is so strong it can never be replaced, akin to email.
Theo - t3.gg@theoI'm going to use my AI psychosis to fix clouds for agents. Someone else needs to use their psychosis to fix source control. I would do it myself but I'm already too deep on the cloud thing. GitHub is dying and git is not the right primitive. Will dump some thoughts here.