#magit

Assume we already know how to do everything Magic can do manually - with the Git CLI and other manual actions. Assume we've got our shell ergonomics polished to the point that it takes us 3-6 keystrokes to run most commands. Assume we've got a great interface for moving through, searching, and copying the text output from Git commands.

Now what does Magit get us? What's faster or more ergonomic? Where do we save keystrokes or manual steps? Where do we save mental labor? What relevant info is more accessible at the right times and places?

For example,

if you want to stage lines more granularly than "git add -p" can split, in Magit if you have lines in the diff selected and hit stage, only those lines are staged;

when you go to write your commit message, Magit automatically shows you the diff beside the commit message, which is surprisingly more helpful than you might realize until you've experienced no longer having to remember with your brain what you just staged;

Magit remembers recent commit messages for you, so for example if you abort a commit and then wish you could get the message you typed back, it's just couple keystrokes away.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic

Carl Sagan, Cosmos, The Persistence of Memory