I suspect the main cause of git snobbery is that the types of projects for which it is more useful tend to be larger and more likely to be released, hence higher status.
The way the dynamic works is as follows: initially the programmers working on small projects prefer svn and the programmers working on big (higher status) projects prefer git. Then people start noticing that preferring git correlates with status (and possibly skill). So people who don't use either but what to appear to be high status programers (and even some svn users) start trashing svn.
Not sure why you were downvoted. You're definitely onto something. Signaling does seem to be one reason for git's success. Someone I know compared it to The Emperor's New Clothes in the context of how bad git's UI (at least if you were used to svn) and documentation are.
To be honest, I see signaling in a lot of programmer culture. I use Ubuntu, and I had a conversation with my brother about it. He told me while he'd like to have more recent software and the ease of use that comes with Ubuntu, he doesn't want to look like a moron, so he uses Debian. The cho...
Hello! I'm running an Ideological Turing Test for my local rationality group, and I'm wondering what ideology to use (and what prompts to use for that ideology). Palladias has previously run a number of tests on Christianity, but ideally I'd find something that was a good 50/50 split for my community, and I don't expect to find many Christians in my local group. The original test was proposed for politics, which seems like a reasonable first-guess, but I also worry that my group has too many liberals and not enough conservatives to make that work well.
What I plan to do is email the participants who have agreed to write entries asking how they stand on a number of issues (politics, religion, etc) and then use the issue that is most divisive within the population. To do that, however, I'll need a number of possible issues. Do any of you have good ideas for ITT domains other than religion or politics, particularly for rationalists?
(Side questions:
I've been leaning towards using the name "Caplan Test" instead of "Ideological Turing Test". I think the current name is too unwieldy and gives the wrong impression. Does the ITT name seem worth keeping?
Also, would anyone on here be interested in submitting entries to my test and/or seeing results?)