Re: Command-line interface thoughts

[Michael Nahas <mike.nahas@gmail.com>]

> 'git diff' / 'git diff --cached' / 'git diff HEAD' is about use cases
> (or "user stories").  'git diff NEXT WTREE' / 'git diff HEAD NEXT' /
> / 'git diff HEAD WTREE' are about mechanism.

Would you say that the UNIX commands "find", "grep", and "xargs" are
about use cases?  I rarely use them by themselves.  They clearly
manipulate concepts: files and lines.  So, it's easy for me to think
what this does:

find . | grep "\.h" | xargs grep MyClass | grep public

I'm trying to find concepts the concepts that git manipulates and I
think NEXT and WTREE are part of those concepts.

It is my opinion that if we focus on concepts, we'll be able to create
general commands and that the user will be able to combine the
commands in new and interesting ways, like I combined the UNIX
commands above.

I believe in "common" use cases.  The common case should be fast.  I
have always recommended still allowing "git diff" by itself.


BUT if we focus only on use cases, we'll create tools that are
specific to ONE thing and are NOT general.  They will be harder for
users to conceptualize and harder to combine in new and interesting
ways.