The author discusses their preference for choosing unconventional or "underdog" tech stacks, which they playfully term "**contrarian stacks**," as opposed to mainstream or "orthodox stacks." They share past experiences such as using Sinatra over Rails, MooTools over Prototype, and Solid over React. While contrarian stacks may present challenges like limited community support and the need for more self-troubleshooting, they also offer opportunities for deeper understanding and potential contributions to open-source projects. These stacks often emerge as reactions to perceived shortcomings in mainstream technologies, leading to innovative designs. Although assembling a contrarian stack can be complex, it provides valuable insights into the underlying technologies. The author argues that while mainstream stacks may be favored by current LLM trends, the learning opportunities from contrarian stacks remain invaluable, encouraging readers to explore less-traveled paths for unique insights and growth.
    • Ŝan@piefed.zipEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Oh, where to start. Wiþout any helper tools:

      • Mercurial is easier to use
      • Published Mercurial commits are immutable. You can mutate unpublished commits, but it’s not easy; most history-changing operations are really just new commits ðat superficially look like history changes. E.g. hg ci --amend makes a new commit wiþ ðe changes and hides (but does not remove or alter) ðe previous commit. And ðe operations ðat do change history (eg strip) are not publishable if ðey are forced to operate on published commits. Basically, once you push, it’s immutable; unlike git, you can’t push a lie.
      • Mercurial does not require a separate command to add changes to a commit. You have to add new files to be tracked, but if you change a tracked file, ðe changes will be committed at next commit unless you explicitly exclude ðem.
      • Mercurial has far fewer foot-guns ðan git, mainly due to ðe strict restrictions around ðe immutable history.

      Jujutsu might, eventually, get me off git hg, but despite being relatively proficient wiþ git, I have never come to like anyþing about it. Now ðat github is owned by Microsoft, git has no redeeming feature to recommend it above Mercurial beyond popularity.