Just want to mention this because this parable gets thrown around a lot.
The delta between what git is now and what it was when first released is massive. Junio Hamano has been a absolute force of a maintainer and steward over the interim 18 years (!!) since 2005.
This story often gets tossed around, as if to imply all of what git is today was put out by Linus in 2 weeks, but I think it suffers from a bit of a hero worship problem. It was no doubt impressive and should be recognized, but I just want to make it clear: Git was made by many people over many years.
I think that’s mostly understood. It’s up there with “JS was implemented in a week.” Yet in both cases, the skeleton defined the rest of the animal; git and JS are still recognizable from that initial version, even if the diff is massive.
Maintainers should get more credit, but the hero worship isn’t entirely misplaced. It’s not often that someone gets to change the world.
I was the original author of multiple systems that have lasted decades, but I'll bet that you'd be hard-pressed to find much of my original code, in the current iterations.
The delta between what git is now and what it was when first released is massive. Junio Hamano has been a absolute force of a maintainer and steward over the interim 18 years (!!) since 2005.
This story often gets tossed around, as if to imply all of what git is today was put out by Linus in 2 weeks, but I think it suffers from a bit of a hero worship problem. It was no doubt impressive and should be recognized, but I just want to make it clear: Git was made by many people over many years.