Blog them all

I’ve spent the last weeks asking around to my fellow developers friends why they use the git command line tool instead of a nice GUI. Years ago when I was using Linux some people were just against GUI tools, but today they’re not anymore. The reason they don’t use a GUI is there is no current application good enough for replacing the git command line.

The existing tools like Gitx, Tower, Gitk, Sprout, Gitnub are all very similar in the way they do things, they are only improved tool of a basic Gitk but nothing than actually makes you want to use it full time.

I know, you think this is a useless application, git in command line is good enough. But you’d probably say the same thing about Github 4 years ago, as you had your own servers, but it still became the de facto standard for Git source hosting today. Most of all because they added features noone thought about git at the time (easier pull, social coding, etc).

Questions coming to mind about a GUI Git application:

1. Why you don’t use a GUI?
2. Why such a tool doesn’t exist yet?
3. What would make you use this tool?
4. How long would it take to make such a tool?
5. Would it be sustainable?

My answers:

1. You don’t use those GUI because they suck, if you use git you probably know what you’re doing. Adding features slower to use in GUI than command line is a bad idea. You then basically run a GUI only to view branches and do visual things, once a week.
2. A better tool doesn’t exist because it’s tough to develop, a new one need to find a new workflow, using complete different workflow than the existing bad ones.
3. You would use the new tool because it saves you time, and allow not so advanced git user to do tricky things without knowing git as well. It also needs features for small groups, like push notifications when someone push code, local gitjour similar feature (share your git locally and discover others through Bonjour) for quick hackathon. You’d want a nice branch visual like the ones from github, and a commenting system similar to github. You’d want full Github support, a live activity feed similar to BaseCamp listing commits, new comments. You’d want a light chat to reply live to commits, only for developers. You’d want more than just a git GUI.
4. I think a beta version of such a Cocoa tool would take 3 months full time to get a beta, 6 months to get something working on a daily basis, for a team of at least 2 very good developers. There is a lot of thoughts to put in the design first.
5. I can’t say, but seeing github is bigger than Google Code and Sourceforge, and everyone in San Francisco has a mac laptop as a development laptop, I have the feeling such a tool, if popular, would be sustainable for a team of 3 people full time. San Francisco is a lot about trends, if you can make such a tool popular among a few top developers, there is a big change the others would follow.

So you wonder how to display an UIWebView the way Mail.app does for HTML emails ? Hold your breath, I’ve written a very simple code for you to do that. And it works just as nice as you could imagine. I’ve also made a short screencast for you to see it working.

Get the code on my github : UIWebView in UITableview.

I had the chance to travel to California from last April to July. As any computer geek I had always dreamed about going to California, and mostly around Mountain View. Thanks for my friends, I had the chance to visit Google few times, Yahoo!, Six Apart, Google Android, Apple, some smaller private startups. I’ve got beers with the guys from GitHub (thanks Tom, it was nice meeting you), LightHouse, Twitter, LinkedIn, AfterShock (thanks James!). Orange Lab told me on Twitter I could call 1014 (A French phone number for customer support) to meet them (ahah). I’ve met many more people which I can’t list here, and I’ve also finally met Phil Jeudy (twitter).

I’ve attended the Rails Conf 2009 in Vegas, and the WWDC 09 in SF. The rails conference was very high level, Vegas had the cheapest hotels I could imagine for the room we got. On the other side the WWDC conferences were not as high level as I would imagine, but someone said 60% of the attendees never attended before. I would recommend going to both if it’s you work in those domains, meeting people in real is a big boost for your projects.

Something I did not have in mind, is the good general vibe you have in San Francisco. I had the chance to meet Shane Vitarana (blog), who published DrumKit on the Appstore (it’s featured in Apple ads, on Union Square on top of buildings, etc). He introduced me to many people, and we had a lot of fun together (I have to confess, I don’t go out much while I’m in Paris, but did almost every day in SF). Thanks Shane, you made my trip.

I’ve learned a lot being in San Francisco for that long, on iPhone projects as much as on Rails projects, and on web projects in general. If you work on ideas, make them happen in California. It won’t take longer than anywhere else, but the general impact might be much bigger for you. Raising funds is much easier too. I’ve met so many independent developers in San Francisco making lots of money (>$200K a year) without working much (but worked hard in the past, or had a good idea).

You have two kinds of people in San Francisco, the ones working 20 hours a day, or doing 2 hours commuting a day going from downtown to Mountain View and working for the big players. And you have the ones not working as much and enjoying life. I’d suggest going for the 2nd option if you plan to go to SF.

So would I go back to San Francisco ? Hell yeah ! But surprisingly I would go again not for work, but for the good vibe. Of course there are tons of IT companies there, and even the average level of software developers ain’t better than France (or other countries), you have way more people, way more companies. That operates like a magnet. At the end, you have way more projects happening there. San Francisco makes projects possible. My only concern is time does not run the same way in SF, and a one year stay would pass like a week in other cities.

See you soon San Francisco (my flickr California set).

Je ne vais pas vous faire l’affront de vous présenter GitHub ou Gitorious mais quand j’utilise ces services je me dis que c’est vraiment ce qui manque à mercurial… A quand la même chose ?