Sales Safari on Version Control with Git Book Review Thread

Zach Jones: [0:00] To the cloud.

Laurel: [0:02] Cool.

Zach: [0:03] We are live.

Laurel: [0:05] Cool.

Zach: [0:06] We are doing some Sales Safari on some Git watering holes that found. We're starting with "Version Control with Git," which is a book on Amazon.

[0:28] The first comment, "Intentionally unrealistic examples serve to obfuscate rather than illuminate." That doesn't sound like a normal person's review.

Laurel: [0:42] All right.

Zach: [0:44] Unrealistic example is definitely a pain. What's up, John?

John: [0:55] Yo. What's up, fam?

Zach: [0:59] I'm doing my first Sales Safari.

Laurel: [1:01] Sales Safari.

Zach: [1:03] At least not directed by Amy and Alex, that is.

John: [1:09] Right.

Laurel: [1:12] So...

Zach: [1:12] So...Go ahead.

Laurel: [1:14] We're doing some Sales Safari on Amazon reviews for this "Git Version Control" book. Now, we're going to go through and find some pain.

Zach: [1:30] I wonder if we'll find people trying to use big words all the time. "Unrealistic example serves to obfuscate rather than illuminate. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but this is just not a good book."

Laurel: [1:46] It's like, "I just don't like your face." Something about.

Zach: [2:00] There's definitely pain in that sentence, but I don't know if there's something down there.

Laurel: [2:06] It's hard to pinpoint."

Zach: [2:06] You're better off looking at online tutorials." There's a recommendation.

Laurel: [2:10] Online tutorials.

Zach: [2:13] Most troubling are the intentional idiotic and unrealistic examples used." All right. This person is a foobar person. Not to interpret, but that's my thoughts.

John: [2:29] They have expectations of realistic examples. I think it's a big.

Zach: [2:34] Right, so that's a world view, huh? Let me get not ScreenFlow, Zoom out the way. "Looking for real-world..." Yeah. This person must...I don't know. These are some strong words. "Rather than helping the reader to understand, they obfuscate because the examples are generally so random."

Laurel: [3:04] Random examples?

Zach: [3:05] Random examples. "Putting in origin repository and slash temp. No one would do such a thing. "The pain there is, "Doing things that are unexpected," I guess?

John: [3:29] Doing things the community would."

Laurel: [3:33] Not following good practices or community practices."

John: [3:37] Expecting that, or what's the expectation there, that there is a right way that everyone should follow."

Zach: [3:49] Yeah. "I found myself going back and forth trying to keep track of what the author was attempting to illustrate."

Laurel: [4:01] Hard to follow?

Zach: [4:06] Yeah, hard to follow. Going back and forth in the example. "Very frustrating read, and for reference, I've been using a similar version control system, Mercurial," there's some jargon, "for quite some time."

Laurel: [4:31] What's the jargon? Mercurial.

Zach: [4:33] Mercurial.

Laurel: [4:37] Wow. I've never used Mercurial.

Zach: [4:40] I haven't either. "The lack of legibility of this book..."

John: [4:43] Newbie.

Zach: [4:46] Is that OG, or Java?

John: [4:52] No. It's like there's like CVS, then SVN, then Mercurial. Now, everyone, just Git and takes it for granted. That actually helped me.

Laurel: [5:01] It's the only option.

Zach: [5:02] I know my dad uses SVN, so I equate that to Java developers.

John: [5:09] Great.

Zach: [5:10] The lack of legibility of this book is further compounded by many errors, frequently involving discrepancies between text and the accompanying issues." So, "Consistency in the book."

"[5:35] When the diagram clearly indicates that Alice started the project, at least some of these have been..." Wait. I skipped ahead, huh? "For example, Figure 9-1 is described as 'Imagine that Cal started the project and Alice joined in' when the diagram clearly indicates that Alice started the project." Nice.

"[5:58] At least some of these have been fixed between the first and second edition, but this example is from the current second edition." It's that same, "Many errors. Not consistent in the book. Hard to follow along."

Laurel: [6:18] What's interesting is that 11 people found this helpful.

Zach: [6:23] You can respond to people.

Laurel: [6:35] Yeah.

Zach: [6:36] I don't want to respond, but we'll have to look and see...

Laurel: [6:41] The link to your Git course?

Zach: [6:41] Yeah. We'll have to see if anyone's responding to other people. Galen Menzel, "A fully-loaded information train wreck." Someone else? Yet it's still three stars. That reminds me of how Amy and Alex were talking about with the cat litter example.

Laurel: [7:19] Example.

Zach: [7:19] Clearly, people are having a lot of issues with it, like getting their WD-40 out and doing some hard core maintenance, but they're still buying the $140 product.

John: [7:36] I think there's also the sunk cost idea like, "I bought this book and I'm not going to admit that that was a bad choice by giving it one star."

Zach: [7:49] Yeah.

John: [7:51] I guess it was worth my time to read." It was like justifying their time spent on it.

Zach: [8:05] I feel like there could also be people who have like a internal tolerance. "Oh, you know. It's kind of in the middle. It's definitely not four or five."

John: [8:16] That's like the Uber driver principle. You just don't want to make them feel bad.

Zach: [8:23] Let's make them feel bad. Uber drivers, that's different than this, I think. What's up, Will?

Laurel: [8:31] Hey, Will.

Zach: [8:35] What up, Will?

Will: [8:38] Yo, what up?

Zach: [8:41] Doing some Sales Safari with Laurel and John.

Will: [8:46] Sweet.

Zach: [8:47] It's my first time doing it out in the wild.

Will: [8:52] That's the only place to do it.

Zach: [8:55] I guess, in the workshop, that is still out in the wild, but it's a little more dirty.

Will: [9:05] I really like this. "A fully-loaded information train wreck."

Zach: [9:09] Yeah. These people are...Look at this first one. "Intentionally unrealistic examples serve to obfuscate rather than illuminate."

Laurel: [9:19] Rather than illuminate."

Zach: [9:23] These people are upset, and yet, it's a three star.

Will: [9:31] I said this before in the 35, at 100 Club. Me and my wife like to do this, read Amazon reviews, because they're always so good. They're so over the top.

Zach: [9:44] Yeah.

Will: [9:45] People never fail us.

Zach: [9:46] People are like just get worked up.

Will: [9:50] Yeah.

Zach: [9:51] All right. "Though more comprehensive than Scott Chacon's..." I don't know.

Laurel: [10:01] Pro Git."

Zach: [10:02] I'm not sure in that name, Pro Git. Please tell me. Pro Git?

Laurel: [10:07] Yeah.

Zach: [10:08] Right. That's a recommendation. Don't read Scott, however you say his last name, Pro Git book.

"[10:19] This book is a mess. It fails both as a reference and as a tutorial." The pain there...This might be a world view thing. "You buy books to use for different purposes. If you want to use it as a reference, commit to being a reference book." Maybe that's speaking too much into it.

Laurel: [10:50] I know. That makes sense.

Zach: [10:55] It's written in a verbose, example-driven style, which dulls its usefulness as a reference." So, "Example-driven style."

Laurel: [11:07] Verbose."

John: [11:17] They want a reference."

Zach: [11:21] The authors' ludicrous sense of pacing ruins it as a tutorial."

Will: [11:29] It's so good.

Laurel: [11:31] Not having a good pace."

Zach: [11:34] A 'ludicrous' sense of pacing." Do not upset people who are into Git, I guess, or trying to learn Git.

"[11:51] The chapter that is supposed to serve as an introduction to Git, Chapter 3, is a scattershot mishmash of common tasks, like executing a commit and once-off configuration commands like setting your commit author information."

Will: [12:06] It's so good.

Zach: [12:09] A scattershot mishmash of common tasks" sounds like something we need to, for sure, write down.

Will: [12:15] Yeah.

Laurel: [12:16] That's copy...

Will: [12:17] That's copy-worthy for sure.

Zach: [12:24] Should we continue with that, with like, "Executing a commit and once-off configuration?"

Will: [12:33] Yeah.

Zach: [12:35] Wow. What a juicy...This just keeps going on too. "The common tasks that it covers tend to be covered very, very quickly as more of a teaser for more complete coverage later in the book." So, "Feels like a teaser and not the real thing." Whatever "the real thing" is.

Will: [13:07] Are you doing a course on that?

Zach: [13:08] Yeah.

Laurel: [13:09] Yeah.

Will: [13:10] On GitHub?

Zach: [13:14] Laurel convinced me.

Will: [13:14] Were you there across the set the other day? I didn't see you.

Zach: [13:21] You told me that...

Will: [13:22] I see. You had the cool font?

Zach: [13:23] Yeah, and your goal is to get me to say trill.

Will: [13:28] Oh, yeah. My bad man.

Zach: [13:31] No, all good.

Will: [13:35] Well, you just said it, 20/20.

Zach: [13:43] Let's see. "While it's fine to delay full coverage of usage until later," so that's a recommendation, I think. Like, "It's fine to introduce a topic for further coverage later." I just noticed, the arm of my chair...Never mind.

Laurel: [14:12] You should leave an Amazon review on...

Zach: [14:17] On my Aeron chair that I love? Let's see. "Reading only this chapter would leave you totally ill-equipped to do anything useful with Git." That's the continuation of.

Will: [14:45] They're so eloquent with their complaints.

Zach: [14:49] Yeah, they are. I assume Amazon filters out any curse words, but they're being way more flavorful than you'd expect. This is like when you sit with this emotion for a while too. Like you're really stewing in it, and you're like, "I need to..."

Will: [15:16] Yeah, that's not off the cuff at all.

Zach: [15:20] I need to get these feelings out and let them know in multiple ways how it's making me feel."

John: [15:25] I've written one book review in my life and it was negative because I was so disappointed with the way a series ended.

Zach: [15:33] Is that serious?

Laurel: [15:36] Programming book?

John: [15:37] It was a Michael Vey, a series like a little, what do they call those, preteen or youth...It's one of those youth books like a superhero story as kind of read along with the kids, and the final book was absolute garbage. It's the worst thing I've ever read in my life.

Zach: [15:58] That sucks.

John: [15:59] I swear that I wrote in my review like, "The only explanation for this book is that the author was up against the deadline and he outsourced the book to someone in India to just write something before Friday."

Zach: [16:21] Literally kills the characters.

John: [16:25] Those negative emotions, they bring out like, "How did this even happen?" Like you have to start theorizing on how something so terrible could exist and you just start writing it down.

Zach: [16:40] You just keep going.

John: [16:41] Yeah.

Zach: [16:44] Cool. Let's see. "Totally ill-equipped...By contrast, Chapter 2 of Pro Git contains most everything you need to be autonomous, if somewhat unsophisticated, Git user working in a single branch." Is that a...?

Laurel: [17:08] I'd say...

Zach: [17:09] How do we even put that?

Laurel: [17:11] I'm going to add that to pain. It's copy.

Zach: [17:27] Cool. More big words coming up. "Chapter 4, ostensibly about 'Basic Git Concepts', since that is its title, is actually mostly about Git Internals, and is completely out of place at the beginning of the book."

Laurel: [17:48] So, "Too much focus on Git Internals?"

Zach: [17:52] Mm-hmm. Do we make inferences here?

John: [18:02] Oh, yeah. For sure.

Zach: [18:06] When I hear that, I think beginners like, "How to phrase it? The internals aren't relevant," and...

Laurel: [18:23] For beginners?

Zach: [18:23] I want something practical to start with."

Zach: [18:28] For beginners.

John: [18:30] It's like the car example you always use. "You just want to know how to drive a car. You don't care about the engine yet."

Zach: [18:37] Yeah. Like, "Here's why we're using this type of transmission." It's like, "Dude, I asked you how to shift."

John: [18:50] Which one's gas then?"

Zach: [18:56] Mostly about Git Internals. "Why are we covering blobs and packfiles before we even cover what a branch is?" That's sad. There's some terms, too. Blobs, packfiles.

Laurel: [19:21] Branch.

Zach: [19:22] Yeah. Is that the only jargon that we've come into? Seems like it so far.

Laurel: [19:40] Yeah.

Zach: [19:41] Commit author?

John: [19:42] Yeah, they said commit.

Zach: [19:48] That's that. "Completely just glossing over things you know."

"[20:08] Does knowing the git-write-tree command help me understand how to use Git well as a beginner?" I have no idea what the git-write-tree is.

Laurel: [20:20] Yeah.

Zach: [20:21] I understand it gets a tree, but...Interesting.

"[20:28] If you're not concerned about beginners, why include information about how to install Git? This is basic stuff, guys. Cover the high-level interface first, then cover the low-level commands and internals. Would you start off a Unix tutorial by talking about disk blocks and in-nodes before covering what a directory is?"

John: [20:54] Would you? Would you?

Zach: [20:58] It depends on my goals, John.

John: [21:03] That's a great line though.

Zach: [21:04] That is.

Laurel: [21:06] I'm going to add that. "Cover high-level interface first, then cover low-level commands."

Zach: [21:13] That's a recommendation, right?

Laurel: [21:16] Yeah.

Zach: [21:20] The pattern continues..."

John: [21:22] We call that Uncoverage in UbD. High-level first approach and then dig in deeper.

Zach: [21:32] That's good. "The pattern continues throughout the book. The authors are completely tone-deaf to the needs of the learner and simply stream information out. Never seem to ask themselves if their presentation will create a progressively more effective Git user."

John: [21:53] Can you imagine this like a stream of consciousness book on Git that just sits there and dictate it. "Done."

Zach: [22:02] Like, "You know enough to talk about, go into detail about blobs and packfiles and the write-tree." It's like, "Git's already confusing." That would be awful. Coverage of tags is surprisingly bad. Tags, almost non-existent. In fact, this person seems to know quite a bit about Git even though...

Laurel: [22:34] He complains about beginners?

Zach: [22:38] Yeah, like, "Is this for beginners?" and then like, "This assumes that -- I don't know -- you think tags are important, so why would the author?" Clearly, they've read multiple books on Git at this point. "All that said, this is probably the most comprehensive book on Git available." Oh, wow.

Laurel: [23:11] You're right. He's read a couple of books.

Zach: [23:16] The later chapters on advanced manipulations and tips and tricks are good. I give it four stars for content and dock it a star for its abysmal organization. It's not throw-it-in-a-fire bad, but you're better off reading Pro Git as a tutorial, and referring to the man pages, which are quite good, after that." So, "Man pages."

Laurel: [23:49] Pro Git as a tutorial."

Zach: [23:55] Would that be a wreck?

Laurel: [23:58] Yeah. "But you're better off reading Pro Git as a tutorial."

Zach: [24:04] This is the jargon.

Laurel: [24:06] Oops, yes.

Zach: [24:09] This has 13 comments.

Laurel: [24:11] Let's go through.

Zach: [24:14] Nice. I'd love to see it. "In my case, the depth that this covers, internals and data structures, is the biggest value of this book. I already could work with Git. Understanding the internals is why I can help almost anyone at my company with the Git hole they fell in." Git hole they fell in. I like that.

[24:47] That's probably pain. Sorry, the Git hole. I'm not sure what that one is.

Laurel: [24:55] Understanding the internals is why I can help anyone at my company."

Zach: [25:02] It also makes me a more agile engineer, but I completely agree. This book is not written for reference for tutorials." What is it written for?

"[25:22] I agree with this review. I made it to Chapter 6 without gaining a semblance of working knowledge of Git. I came upon a section that was particularly unreadable because of how much it assumed I knew.

"[25:37] Jargon thick and concept heavy, but quite obviously, nothing I'd be using until I was well beyond the Git basics, which I desperately needed." I don't know if that sentence made sense.

Laurel: [25:51] What's the world view on that?

Zach: [26:03] Something about, "Books teaching a topic should explain concepts in simple terms," or "Jargon thick and concept heavy."

Laurel: [26:34] Yeah.

John: [26:34] Speak to the level of the reader."

Zach: [26:36] Yeah.

Will: [26:37] That's a good one for copy, too.

Laurel: [26:41] Jargon thick and concept heavy?

Zach: [26:44] Yeah.

Will: [26:44] Mm-hmm. It depends on who you're aiming for, Zach. I don't know who your target audience is.

Zach: [26:51] Intro to Git. It's the idea, at least. These things are already helping. "I grew frustrated and decided to check reviews here before throwing in the towel. After reading this review and its responses, I'm done with this book for now.

Laurel: [27:19] Would that be a recommendation?

Zach: [27:22] Yes. "Stop reading..."

Laurel: [27:23] Check reviews before..."

Zach: [27:24] Yeah, or "Stop reading this book."

Will: [27:32] Yeah.

Zach: [27:33] I'm sure there are some gems in this book worth the price, but as a beginner tutorial, it failed me."

Will: [27:42] Does this beginner tutorial ever failed you?" Not this one by Zach Jones.

Laurel: [27:49] Yeah.

Zach: [27:52] This email's writing itself.

Will: [27:55] Yeah. "Are you looking for something that's not jargon, hitting the jargon field, and concept heavy, or jargon thick and concept heavy..."

Zach: [28:04] Do you want something...?"

Will: [28:06] with practical examples?"

Laurel: [28:11] A fully-loaded information train wreck."

Zach: [28:18] Where is it? "Do you want to avoid a scattershot mishmash of common tasks and one-off configuration commands?"

Will: [28:28] That one is amazing.

Zach: [28:30] It's so good. This is ridiculous. "Off-base. This book and 'Pro Git' are equally good."

Laurel: [28:41] A recommendation.

Zach: [28:43] Yeah. Oh, and then she follows up, same person. She just had to get that out there as fast as possible, and then she follows it up with more.

"[28:54] For every person, there's a different learning style. I have a Pro Git book and this one, and each approach is learning Git from basically the same angle. The third chapter in this book is as good as the intro and Pro Git.

"[29:06] The man page is useless for learning Git. I-nodes and disk blocks are obsolete. Real Unix uses ZFS. Are you kidding me?" This person almost took that other review personally.

Laurel: [29:29] Yeah.

Zach: [29:33] Here's a recommendation. "Man page is useless at learning Git."

Laurel: [29:45] Added that as a pain also works.

Zach: [29:52] Which is interesting because now we're getting conflicting recommendations. "One problem with Ry's tutorial," I guess that's the person, "is it does not cover GitHub. Gul Levin, who sponsors his page, this isn't likely to change." Wait, were these?

Laurel: [30:24] Expecting..."

Zach: [30:25] Expects coverage of popular tools." My pleasure. I haven't checked out the online version. Wait, is this...?

Laurel: [30:51] Is that the author?

Zach: [30:55] Jon is the author. Who is this? I wonder if it's Ry's tutorial. Is that the author of Pro Git? Nope.

Laurel: [31:22] Nope.

Zach: [31:23] Nope. "Pro Git is still the best I've had."

Laurel: [31:31] It's the second...Well, the third book.

Zach: [31:37] Nice. Ry's Git.

Laurel: [31:41] So, recommendations.

Zach: [31:46] You should try Ry's friendly guide to Git. Excellent primer written in a conversational tone which digs as deep as one could need in later chapters.

"[32:03] Has your quest been successful?" Not yet. "I agree. This review is dead on. It is bad and I fail to understand why others can give it so many stars. The only reason why it isn't thrown in the fire bed for me is that I have the Kindle version."

Laurel: [32:21] That's...

Zach: [32:22] The post is dead on. I've been reading the book for a couple of days, and I agree, train wreck is the right term. I also read Pro Git which I feel is a better book, but I felt it wasn't good enough, which is why I also bought this one," or "I bought this one. My quest for a good book on Git continues." Can't find a good book on Git.

Laurel: [33:05] Some copy. My quest for a good book on Git continues."

Zach: [33:12] Nice. Right. "This 1 is the only review out of 19 to give three stars instead of five, and yet no one has commented on it. Instead, this review is highly rated enough to be featured at the top. This contrast makes no sense and warrants further commentary. Hey, book owners, which is it? Does this book deserve three stars or five?"

[33:32] Are Galen's criticism warranted or completely off base? Well, we have more three-star reviews to back Galen up.

Laurel: [33:45] Let's go to the next.

Zach: [33:47] That must have been the first bad review of the book which is why it got so many comments. Well, that's me speculating. "Agreed with other reviewers. This book misses the mark as either a reference or as a tutorial."

Laurel: [34:08] That keeps coming up.

Zach: [34:10] Yeah. "Book is not a reference or a tutorial." Let's see.

Laurel: [34:22] They seem to be the same thing.

Zach: [34:30] I want to mark how many times that phrase gets said. We can go like this, make it super small. I think that's three times now. I like that.

Laurel: [34:55] It's also part of the pain. I'm going to follow your format of adding a...

Zach: [35:20] Nice. It's supposed to be a star?

Laurel: [35:28] Yeah.

Zach: [35:29] Referencing. OK.

Laurel: [35:30] Reference, like connecting both. Wait, I can do this instead. There we go.

Zach: [35:42] Out of the way. Nice. I assumed that it was intended as a tutorial, but for that, I found that topics were not presented in ideal order, and the most common command usages were not always covered. Oops. "Common commands were not...Common command usage is not covered."

Laurel: [36:32] Topics were not presented in ideal order."

Zach: [36:34] For example, Chapter 6 goes into detail about how the commit-graph reflects the branching and merging that has gone on in the repository and how you can refer to commits on specific branches. However, branching and merging are not discussed until Chapters 7 and 9 respectively. Nice.

"[36:53] If you're trying to follow along in the Git command shell," -- That is some jargon I don't know. Maybe it's a Windows user -- "you wouldn't be able to use any of that information until you have read those follow-on chapters.

"[37:16] When discussing tagging, the author describes how to create a tag and how to search for a tag, but never shows how to just get a simple list of tags that have been previously created."

Laurel: [37:37] I'll add, "How to just get a simple list of tags that have been previously created."

Zach: [37:46] Yes. Let me put those in quotes. "If you read this book cover to cover and jump forward and backward frequently, you will learn a lot about Git, but it's not the most straightforward way to do so."

Laurel: [38:10] So...

Zach: [38:14] Excellent deep dive into Git. I was already using Git at a superficial level mainly to review the work of my programming team, and this book has raised my understanding of the process. I have now gifted everyone in the team a copy." Recommendation.

Laurel: [38:34] This book.

Zach: [38:35] Everyone should have a copy of this book."

Laurel: [38:44] What's the world view here? "Everyone should have a copy."

Zach: [39:00] I think the distinction here is this person is familiar with Git already, where the previous reviews, people were looking for in beginner's guide or beginner's tutorial on Git. It talks a lot about how Git does certain things and why it does those things instead of simply focusing on what it does.

Laurel: [39:37] So, "Beginners...?"

Zach: [39:42] Yeah. "Beginners want what?" or "Those familiar want how and why, and beginners want more what."

"[40:04] From those coming from an SVN background like myself periodically has the sides explaining how Git differs from SVN and other control systems. Maybe there's an assumption that you're coming from SVN." That could be a hidden pain. "In accordance with the design principle of separation of mechanism and policy..."

Laurel: [40:46] Jargon?

Zach: [40:48] Yeah. If that's not jargon, I don't know what it is.

"[40:52] The book often explains Git functionality and then offers different ways in which the functionality can be applied. It does not recommend a particular way of doing everything but explains the choices available. The user can then determine a policy that best fits their needs."

[41:07] From this statement, this is where other people were like, "What are the common command usages? What should I be using?" This person sees it as a good thing.

Laurel: [41:38] They're focusing on...

Zach: [41:40] You get all of the commands, and they're not telling you which ones to use or how to use them, but they're covering them." I'm not sure if that qualifies as a pain, or what?