Programming

I use various extensions for Visual Studio Code. They add a million features, but these are the ones I find most useful:

I prefer to view the current status of my checkout in the sidebar of my code editor than on the command line.

It's easier to view a diff of a file and decide whether to stage or rollback changes in a GUI. With most GUIs you can even select individual lines of code and revert or stage them.

I like how Commit and Push and Pull are a single "Commit & Sync" button in Visual Studio code. Similarly there's a simple "Sync" button in the status bar.

Speaking of the status bar - it also has a counter for commits that need to be pushed or pulled. And it tells you what branch you're currently on. And whether you have uncommitted changes. Handy.

I find the GUI equivalent of git log --graph is significantly easier to understand when the graph is drawn with nice vector lines instead of ASCII art.

Finally - I don't just use raw git, I also use extensions like pull requests, and I create branches for issue numbers. I have an extension that shows pull requests in Visual Studio Code and also shows issues assigned to me, with a one click "Start Working" button to create a branch named after the issue and change the issue status to In Progress. And when I'm finished working on it, there's a button for that too.

Since I work in Linux and primarily code in languages like C and C++ (i.e. compiled langs), I work completely in the terminal, so I don't use any GUI. It's nice and I'm already there for my compiling so I might as well use it for git.

However, re remembering all the commands, there is a nifty website I found a while ago and bookmarked called Git Explorer where you basically choose from dropdowns of what you want to do and it gives you the command(s) for it.

I use SourceTree regularly, but when shit hits the fan, I always fall back to the terminal.

I use TortoiseGit.

The log window gives me overview and almost every action I need. Switching, rebasing, creating and deleting branches and tags, pushing, fetching, merging, view logs of files, diffing, blaming…

The log view is still much better than the VS Git log view. And due to it's visual GUI it's much better than CLI when going beyond just one branch or a low number of my own branches.

If you're already comfortable working in the shell, you should check out tig. It's not as fully featured as the other clients named here, but it's an excellent viewer nevertheless.