Ryan Rinaldi

Some of the new super cool things on the block are Distributed Version Control Systems and being somebody that is into super cool new things I figured I would spend some time and get to know them.

A couple months ago Steve and I had a hack-a-thon weekend and he introduced me to Git. I have to say that I didn’t really like Git.  I found it a bit cumbersome and confusing.  Honestly, that is probably more my fault than Git’s because I had no idea how DVCSs worked and Git is a little to powerful to be put in the hands of a novice.  Needless to say handing me Git was like handing me a .45 and pointing it at my foot.  It was only a matter of time until I shot myself.

So after blowing off both of my feet and a few other appendages I wrote DVCS off as a bad idea.  Luckily Joel Spolsky wrote a very awesome intro to Mercurial that peeked my interest again.  Reading the intro filled in a lot of the blanks in my mental model of how DVCS works.  I suggest you spend some time reading the intro and then do as I did and go purchase the really awesome Mastering Mercurial series from TekPub.  Once you watch that I think you’ll find Mercurial (and Git) a very compelling SCM solution.  I found it compelling enough to get a Kiln account and try it out on a real honest to goodness (private) project.