> Every time a programmer has an issue with Git, whoever helps them has to sit down and explain the underlying system for 20 minutes and draw a bunch of sticks and bubbles. Non-programmers will never put up with this.
But from my experience, they have to do this exactly once per (non-stupid) programmer. The moment you grok underlying structure (basically all graphs and pointers), the apparent complexity disappears and most of the things in git become obvious. I see no problems with explaining this to non-programmers as well, you just have to spend a little more time, because they probably aren't used to think in terms of graphs.
But from my experience, they have to do this exactly once per (non-stupid) programmer. The moment you grok underlying structure (basically all graphs and pointers), the apparent complexity disappears and most of the things in git become obvious. I see no problems with explaining this to non-programmers as well, you just have to spend a little more time, because they probably aren't used to think in terms of graphs.