Re: [PATCH 2/2] doc: add new Git tutorial for beginners

["Julia Evans" <julia@jvns.ca>]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2026, at 12:03 PM, Richard Kerry wrote:
> Hi Julia, Team,
>
> There was a request earlier for notes from Windows Git users, so as I 
> am one I thought I might respond a little.

I really appreciate this, it's (obviously) very important that the tutorial work
well on Windows, and as you can probably tell when reading it, I haven't used
Windows in a very long time. But that shortcoming of mine shouldn't mean that
the tutorial deprioritizes Windows users' point of view :)

Also ccing Johannes.

> I use Git mostly via a GUI app.  I do understand that documentation for 
> Git proper needs to treat it as command-line as all the GUIs are a bit 
> different.  I think they all work via the CLI version and all that I 
> use do always show the commands, so I quite understand that 
> documentation needs to be done like that.
>
> However....
>
> Windows users don't use vim (or  vi).

Re vim: I'd love any ideas for how to make it more clear that using vim
isn't required in any way to use Git on Windows.

My understanding is that Git for Windows asks you to configure an editor
when installing Git, so maybe we could say something like this:

  By default, Git uses the `vi` text editor, which is extremely difficult
  to use if you're not used to it. On Windows, Git for Windows asks you to
  configure a text editor during the install to avoid this problem.

And of course it's not just Windows users who are not comfortable
with vim, there are many Mac and Linux users who don't know it either.
I'd imagine only a small minority of Git beginners in 2026 are comfortable
using vim.

> Windows users don't use ssh.
> I'm sure neither of those are completely true, so please no-one write 
> in and say that I'm wrong, but I think a lot of Windows Git users won't 
> do so, and will feel such mentions are not aimed at them and may take 
> it that the whole document isn't either.
>
> I'm sure I've read somewhere that ssh is a nightmare to set up on 
> Windows, so a first-class mention of it may put off Windows users.  It 
> might perhaps get a note that it's for Linux/Unix/etc users only (or 
> only-ish).  Anyway, I've been developing on Windows for about 30 years 
> and using Git for about eight, and never needed ssh for anything.  
> Https is all that I've used for GitHub and BitBucket, which you might 
> consider likely to be the most common servers users might see.  And 
> bearing in mind that GitHub has on-prem versions that may be found in 
> corporate settings.  I'm not sure how easy it is to set up a local Git 
> server by other means as I've never really tried.

I think the idea of giving HTTPS instructions is interesting.
I don't know if it's possible to give vendor-neutral directions for how to set
up Git with HTTPS, but if it is I'd be happy to give it a try. I'd love any
pointers or suggestions for how to do this.

> Vim I think is very uncommon on Windows.  The only editor that is 
> universal is NotePad, but I don't think that would be used much for 
> serious development.  I use versions of Visual Studio but Visual Studio 
> Code (no relation) may be more common nowadays.  For general editing I 
> may use emacs for historical reasons, but I suspect that's nearly as 
> rare on Windows as vim.  Something like NotePad++ would be better.  But 
> then again, it isn't universal.
>
> In short, if it mentions of someone using ssh and vim, I immediately 
> think they are a Linux user, and I may tend to skip those parts of an 
> article, or even assume the whole thing is not aimed at me.
>

This makes sense to me, and I agree it's important to be careful about
how we talk about SSH and vim for the reasons you say.

I think a lot about how to make sure that the Git documentation is
trustworthy and credible, and when we suggest using tools that are
unfamiliar or not commonly used, it reduces credibility and makes it
more likely that people will leave to find information somewhere else.

>
> Kind regards,
>
> Richard Kerry
> BNCS Engineer - Media Competency Centre
> MidCity Place, 71 High Holborn - London WC1V 6EA - UK
> atos.ai