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This post is the epitome of "tell, don't show", when it should be the opposite.

It reads like it wants to convince you to try magit, without demoing a single example of how it's superior.




Then this post may be more appropriate https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/magit-walk-through/


Thank you for sharing. If the original post had included stuff from the one you sent, that would be a high-quality blog post worth reading.


On Magits homepage the articles are shared together as well https://magit.vc/


> Commands are invoked, not by typing them out, but by pressing short mnemonic key sequences.

It also sounds magical in the worst kind of way.


Actually, what makes Magic fantastic is that it continually shows the commands and the various action keys in the gui. This provides a very accessible way of learning a very complex tool.


I love command line tools that provide hints or "command palettes". Typical CLI stuff is great for things I use at least once a week, and usually only in a couple ways. It's terrible at presenting me stuff I could be doing that I don't know about [edit: yes, I know how to use apropos, which is great but still something you have to think to go query on your own], or reminding me how to do the fifth-most-common thing I do with a tool, but that I do only 10% as often as the fourth-most-common, so I have to look it up every single time.

Git is full of that kind of thing. Tealdear and friends usually save me from digging through SO posts or manpages, so remove much of the pain, but it's still worse than having a reminder already on the screen.

(actually, some kind of automated tealdear in a second term or tmux pane, reading what I'm typing with some kind of auto-complete magic so it can show me options quickly even for longer commands, and smart enough to look up "git rebase" as "git-rebase" or whatever, would be amazing... I'll have to look into that)


It's not magical. I forget commands all the time, then all I need to do is type `M-x` (to enter a command, like `Ctrl+P` in VSCode I think) and enter `magit ...` where I get auto-complete (if I do it often, I try to remember the keyboard shortcut, but that's optional).

Also, while in magit, you can type `?` to see the list of available commands from the location where you're pointing at... the commands are single-letters, so you normally do `?`, find the description you want, type `p` (push I think!?) or `c` (commit) or whatever... it's really easy and convenient.


This is one of the things that makes Emacs one of the coolest pieces of software to me. 98% of the operations it can do, are defined in functions, which you can search for easily in the M-x pane with something like Helm, and boom. Even navigation. It's a near fully self-documenting editor that I rarely need to look up help on. Never forget how to activate an action again. Remember what the action is, type it, find the matching command that is aptly-named, push enter to run it. And, with Helm for example, it even shows the keybind next to it.


It's just like vi, for whatever that's worth to anyone. It also has "transient", which shows you what the key sequence you've input so far will do and lets you customize it.


In the same way that abbreviations are magical relative to spelled-out words.


Even though I use magit and I think it's the best git porcelain that exists, I felt the same way before I started using it, and a little of the same way whenever I need to go find out how to do something I haven't done before.




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