Never heard of Hg before? SVN? CVS? Clearcase? SCCS? SCCS++ like unix used? I understand if source code management seems a new skill since it's just been a part of devel for 40-ish years, but one writing about devel could get a handle on it first.
I stopped reading when he wrote "these asks" like "ask" was a noun used by someone writing seriously and not a car salesman. I guess one could "action" an "ask" about the "spend" while "doing lunch", as those all fit the 1984 sales-brody template.
I’m not a programmer and don’t know how to use git, but at least have a basic understanding of what its use is. I think the Closing Thoughts has a pertinent lesson that’s much broader:
I’m reminded of the classic wisdom that so many of history’s key technical decisions are human-driven, not technology-driven.
Facebook didn’t adopt Mercurial because it was more performant than Git. They adopted it because the maintainers and codebase felt more open to collaboration. Facebook engineers met face-to-face with Mercurial maintainers and liked the idea of partnering. When it came to persuading the whole engineering org, the decision got buy-in due to thoughtful communication - not because one technology was strictly better than another.
They made a point of mentioning the clarity and extensibility of the Python codebase as well (not sure if it was the article of the original blog) as making it easier to modify. They could have forked the code if they thought git was clearly better.
