What's wrong with git?: a conceptual design
It is commonly asserted that the success of a software development project, and the usability of the final product, depend on the quality of the concepts that underlie its design. Yet this hypothesis has not been systematically explored by researchers, and conceptual design has not played the centra...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105233 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4037-1645 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4864-078X |
| _version_ | 1826201589109489664 |
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| author | Perez De Rosso, Santiago Nicolas Jackson, Daniel |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Perez De Rosso, Santiago Nicolas Jackson, Daniel |
| author_sort | Perez De Rosso, Santiago Nicolas |
| collection | MIT |
| description | It is commonly asserted that the success of a software development project, and the usability of the final product, depend on the quality of the concepts that underlie its design. Yet this hypothesis has not been systematically explored by researchers, and conceptual design has not played the central role in the research and teaching of software engineering that one might expect. As part of a new research project to explore conceptual design, we are engaging in a series of case studies. This paper reports on the early stages of our first study, on the Git version control system. Despite its widespread adoption, Git puzzles even experienced developers and is not regarded as easy to use. In an attempt to understand the root causes of its complexity, we analyze its conceptual model and identify some undesirable properties; we then propose a reworking of the conceptual model that forms the basis of (the first version of) Gitless, an ongoing effort to redesign Git and experiment with the effects of conceptual simplifications. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:54:06Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/105233 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:54:06Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1052332022-10-01T06:49:37Z What's wrong with git?: a conceptual design Perez De Rosso, Santiago Nicolas Jackson, Daniel Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Jackson, Daniel Perez De Rosso, Santiago Nicolas Jackson, Daniel It is commonly asserted that the success of a software development project, and the usability of the final product, depend on the quality of the concepts that underlie its design. Yet this hypothesis has not been systematically explored by researchers, and conceptual design has not played the central role in the research and teaching of software engineering that one might expect. As part of a new research project to explore conceptual design, we are engaging in a series of case studies. This paper reports on the early stages of our first study, on the Git version control system. Despite its widespread adoption, Git puzzles even experienced developers and is not regarded as easy to use. In an attempt to understand the root causes of its complexity, we analyze its conceptual model and identify some undesirable properties; we then propose a reworking of the conceptual model that forms the basis of (the first version of) Gitless, an ongoing effort to redesign Git and experiment with the effects of conceptual simplifications. SUTD-MIT International Design Centre (IDC) 2016-11-07T20:03:02Z 2016-11-07T20:03:02Z 2013-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper 9781450324724 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105233 Perez De Rosso, Santiago, and Daniel Jackson. “What’s Wrong with Git?: A Conceptual Design Analysis.” ACM Press, 2013. 37–52. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4037-1645 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4864-078X en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2509578.2509584 Onward! Proceedings of the 2013 ACM international symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming & software - Onward! '13 Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Jackson |
| spellingShingle | Perez De Rosso, Santiago Nicolas Jackson, Daniel What's wrong with git?: a conceptual design |
| title | What's wrong with git?: a conceptual design |
| title_full | What's wrong with git?: a conceptual design |
| title_fullStr | What's wrong with git?: a conceptual design |
| title_full_unstemmed | What's wrong with git?: a conceptual design |
| title_short | What's wrong with git?: a conceptual design |
| title_sort | what s wrong with git a conceptual design |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105233 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4037-1645 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4864-078X |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT perezderossosantiagonicolas whatswrongwithgitaconceptualdesign AT jacksondaniel whatswrongwithgitaconceptualdesign |