Comment by nomel

> But if they didn't disagree, they'd have designed a system that made removing things from remote history easy

That's not how real world software development works, especially open source (built on volunteer time, usually for personal use, then shared). See X window system, javascript, etc. Git's foundation was built in 5 days as a side project [1][2]. There wasn't some committee, design reviews, etc with perfect foresight. A foundation was built, and built upon, that worked great for 97% of the use case, with the remaining 3%, including those pesky "real world use" quirks, not fitting so great. This is common in software development [3]. I don't think you can reasonably extract an "agree" or "disagree" developer opinion from the implementation of the feature, but since the filter-branch feature was added 18 years ago [4], two years from gits birth, time for those pesky "real world" scenarios to be revealed, I think "agree" is probably the more likely. "Probably should have made that a first class feature" isn't some impossible phrase...I know I've said it many times.

I would be interested in the history of it though. I think a git documentary would be friggin amazing.

[1] Linus mail: https://marc.info/?l=git&m=117254154130732#:~:text=So%20git%...

[2] Interview with Linus: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/10-years-of-git-an...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_abstraction

[4] filter-branch patch: https://lore.kernel.org/git/Pine.LNX.4.64.0706030129110.4046...