I suspect the main cause of git snobbery is that the types of projects for which it is more useful tend to be larger and more likely to be released, hence higher status.
The way the dynamic works is as follows: initially the programmers working on small projects prefer svn and the programmers working on big (higher status) projects prefer git. Then people start noticing that preferring git correlates with status (and possibly skill). So people who don’t use either but what to appear to be high status programers (and even some svn users) start trashing svn.
Not sure why you were downvoted. You’re definitely onto something. Signaling does seem to be one reason for git’s success. Someone I know compared it to The Emperor’s New Clothes in the context of how bad git’s UI (at least if you were used to svn) and documentation are.
To be honest, I see signaling in a lot of programmer culture. I use Ubuntu, and I had a conversation with my brother about it. He told me while he’d like to have more recent software and the ease of use that comes with Ubuntu, he doesn’t want to look like a moron, so he uses Debian. The choice is strictly utilitarian to me, so others’ impressions are of no concern. I don’t feel the need to signal how hardcore I am in my OS choice. To be honest, switching to Ubuntu has made things so much easier. If you start with Ubuntu server or the netboot installer, you don’t need to add Unity or any of the other garbage included by default. I can still do poweruser things if I’d like to (and sometimes I do). The main disadvantage is that I’d like to use a rolling-release distro, but Ubuntu LTS is close enough.
Editor choice also seems to be strongly influenced by signaling. Having tried both vim and emacs and rejecting both*, I’m struck by how condescending many people are about my editor choice. I use Geany at the moment, which is similar to Notepad++. I’ve had a few conversations that basically went like this:
“If you use any editor other than vim or emacs, you are a moron.”
“I don’t use vim or emacs. Which other editors have you tried?”
″...none. All others are terrible!”
These people generally have not considered any other editors at all. If they did, they considered Sublime, which is nice, but not open source, and I prefer open source. Many people seem to automatically assume that my editor of choice is garbage, despite the fact that I tried a bunch out at one point and picked the one that fit my needs best. I am yet to talk to anyone with these opinions who considered more than a couple editors when making a choice.
* This was before I heard about org-mode, which might cause me to switch to emacs in the future.
“If you use any editor other than vim or emacs, you are a moron.”
“I don’t use vim or emacs. Which other editors have you tried?”
″...none. All others are terrible!”
This is about the point at which my response would be “How would you know, then?” or, worse, “I try not to form strong convictions about subjects where I don’t have evidence worth speaking of.”
Fortunately, these days I get to work with people who are less of technical assholes than myself, so the subject doesn’t come up.
I suspect the main cause of git snobbery is that the types of projects for which it is more useful tend to be larger and more likely to be released, hence higher status.
The way the dynamic works is as follows: initially the programmers working on small projects prefer svn and the programmers working on big (higher status) projects prefer git. Then people start noticing that preferring git correlates with status (and possibly skill). So people who don’t use either but what to appear to be high status programers (and even some svn users) start trashing svn.
Not sure why you were downvoted. You’re definitely onto something. Signaling does seem to be one reason for git’s success. Someone I know compared it to The Emperor’s New Clothes in the context of how bad git’s UI (at least if you were used to svn) and documentation are.
To be honest, I see signaling in a lot of programmer culture. I use Ubuntu, and I had a conversation with my brother about it. He told me while he’d like to have more recent software and the ease of use that comes with Ubuntu, he doesn’t want to look like a moron, so he uses Debian. The choice is strictly utilitarian to me, so others’ impressions are of no concern. I don’t feel the need to signal how hardcore I am in my OS choice. To be honest, switching to Ubuntu has made things so much easier. If you start with Ubuntu server or the netboot installer, you don’t need to add Unity or any of the other garbage included by default. I can still do poweruser things if I’d like to (and sometimes I do). The main disadvantage is that I’d like to use a rolling-release distro, but Ubuntu LTS is close enough.
Editor choice also seems to be strongly influenced by signaling. Having tried both vim and emacs and rejecting both*, I’m struck by how condescending many people are about my editor choice. I use Geany at the moment, which is similar to Notepad++. I’ve had a few conversations that basically went like this:
“If you use any editor other than vim or emacs, you are a moron.”
“I don’t use vim or emacs. Which other editors have you tried?”
″...none. All others are terrible!”
These people generally have not considered any other editors at all. If they did, they considered Sublime, which is nice, but not open source, and I prefer open source. Many people seem to automatically assume that my editor of choice is garbage, despite the fact that I tried a bunch out at one point and picked the one that fit my needs best. I am yet to talk to anyone with these opinions who considered more than a couple editors when making a choice.
* This was before I heard about org-mode, which might cause me to switch to emacs in the future.
This is about the point at which my response would be “How would you know, then?” or, worse, “I try not to form strong convictions about subjects where I don’t have evidence worth speaking of.”
Fortunately, these days I get to work with people who are less of technical assholes than myself, so the subject doesn’t come up.