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Comment by amirmc | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this what 'hacking' is (at least partially) about?

Despite the existence of 'solutions', there are lots of interesting things people can do with git and it's probably fun to explore them.

edit: I'm not sure why you consider it 'marketing' either.

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yep, i understand your point, and i do see the hacking angle. and i also see a bit of zealotism. I would be very curious to learn what benefits could be gained from hacking git to do something like a wiki (other than being able to say that you're using git for wiki). And i'm not cynical here, genuinely curious..

Well, you gain a bunch of features for free, like distributed storage, signed edits, etc. Also, I already know how to use Git, which saves me time over having to learn a whole new set of commands to use some other wiki software.

And frankly, is it really different from using someone else's library or module?

Yeah, even already knowing git isn't necessary. If you didn't learn git, you could learn it, and then you have the skills to use it for all sorts of stuff.

No specialized wiki software can be a DVCS or backup system.

The benefit i see by using git-backed wiki is that your data is not locked into any database/site. In the end they are plain text files and no dependency on database (e.g. myql), and no dependency on git-hosting site. If you dont like github, you can host your wiki else were.

doesn't that make your data less accessible/queryable?

Yes, in the end making a choice is about making a trade-off. If we need easy to query data storage then RDBMS are better.

I agree with the comment. Its hacking and not marketing!!

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