Alternative title: "On benefits of going out of your comfort zone".

Hi, I've been an early adopter of different Version Control Systems.

I started with CVS in the 1990s. CVS was based on the earlier RCS file-versioning tool, but introduced concepts of "module" and "client-server architecture". Still, each of the files was versioned separately which led to various complications.

I switched to Subversion in early 2000s. It was a breath of the fresh air, as it was possible to track all of the project as a whole. Branches worked much faster and were not as painful to use. At this point, the world of open-source software was split in two parts: older projects used CVS, newer used Subversion. And while there were tools for migration they were not super-reliable and a lot of older established projects didn't feel it was worth it to invest into migration. Pretty much all of the active developers learned how to use both of these. This is a very important take and I will return to it later.

Still, both CVS and Subversion were created to be used online: only the current revision was available on the workstation and all of the commits were negotiated with centralized server in real-time. It mostly worked fine if you worked from the office and the team of people working on project wasn't too big…, but it wasn't comfortable if you wanted to work offline. In a lot of real-world situations, people ended up making large monolithic commits which combined all of their day's work.

Due to my changed course of work, I was getting interested both in offline work and being able to create a nicely written history of commits (I had to do some "software archeology", which showed importance of this) and started to look for the solution. I think it was 2004 when I found SVK, which was eye-opening. The idea was pretty simple: SVK was working as a local mirror of external repository. I could make my commits to this mirror and, compared to Subversion and CVS they were instantaneous, as there was no network trips involved. Later, when I got online, I could initiate mirror-synchronization. Sure, there could be conflicts, but there were tools to solve those. It felt like freedom.

SVK didn't gain a lot popularity, except for a small bubble. I tried to do my share of evangelizing, but wasn't too successful: colleagues didn't feel that they needed this kind of complexity. Anyway, it wasn't important as it was a layer on top of Subversion which was a lingua-franca of VCSs at that point. I could work the way I like and still stay compatible with the rest of the world.

Couple of years later, the world of open-source was bubbling with the news about "that VCS created by Linus Torvalds". Everyone felt that it is important, but majority of people were struggling with concept of "distributed" VCS. It was foreign to them and software companies were going through something akin to Five stages of grief. It was easier for me because of the previous experience with SVK and I didn't hesitate to make the switch right after Git made its 1.0 release in the end of 2005.

There were two distinct features of Git, which were important to me: it was extremely fast and I could host my own "remote" for backups, while still being able to push code to public Subversion repositories using git-svn tool. It was simpler than my previous setup and conflict resolution felt superior. At this point I was still using a very limited subset of git commands. It was still mostly "my toy".

In 2008 a social-network called GitHub was launched and the world was never the same again.

At that point I was fluent with Git's more advanced workflows: I was actively using interactive rebase to reorder my commits, I knew how to juggle the staging area to split it into separate commits line by line and how to save the day by using reflog. I started to do the talks for colleagues about it. I was experimenting with Mercurial, GNU Bazaar, Fossil and some of the lesser known systems, but didn't feel the urge to switch "for real": it seemed that everything they provide I can do in Git, which has greater momentum. There was a lot of talk about Git's CLI commands being obscure and illogical, and while I agreed with the sentiment the knowledge was already there at my fingertips. I didn't feel like I was suffering.

Mind you, I was still looking for the ways to make some operations less verbose, but there was more and more good tooling available. In 2015, @swisspol created GitUp GUI for macOS, which, as far as I know, is still unbeaten if you need to reorder branch commits in a fast intuitive fashion. Take a look at the videos on app's website — it's a truly unique UX. I use it daily since then.

Another extremely useful GUI is the "magic wand" conflict resolver included with JetBrans' IDEs. It solves 70% of conflicts for me.

So, as of now, I have spent 20 years of my life using Git. And while I like stable software and value the comfort of verified solutions, I still have a fear of stagnation: It felt obvious, that 20 years is more than enough time for someone to invent solution which would be the new revolution in VCS-productivity. I needed something new. And, boy, was I right!

One day last november I was browsing HackerNews posts and found someone mentioning Jujutsu VCS. I went to check and noticed, that 1. I opened the website earlier (good sign!) and that 2. it is using Git as the backend (e.g. still can be used to collaborate with everyone else!), while 3. being inspired by Mercurial and having new interesting features (wow!). I spent an evening reading [unfinished] Steve's Jujutsu Tutorial (by Steve Klabnik, who's work I respect immensely) and started to use jj the very next morning for one of my work-projects.

The first couple of days were rough: I remember that feeling from the earlier times when I tried new VCSs. It's quite similar to how you feel when trying new programming language for the first time. All of the pieces were somewhere there, but they were lying in unexpected places. I needed to find how to do the things I always did and then I needed to find what are the alternatives to my old ways.

Two months later: I use jj daily for everything and am not looking back. I feel much more productive in my creative phase, as jj lets me spend way less time on formalities, while maintaining full control, which I need to confidentely continue the work. Colleagues didn't notice a thing until I started to advertise Jujutsu to them.

p.s. While this post was mostly about my history with VCSs, I plan to write a follow-up post specifically about my Jujutsu experience. Subscribe via RSS or follow me on Mastodon to avoid missing it.