[pmeunier]

IMHO there are different ways to design a version control system:

1. The SCSS/Git way, aka the hacker way: look at what we can do with existing stuff, and use that to build something that can do the job. For example if you're one of the world's expert on filesystem implementations, you can actually produce a fantastic tool like Git.

2. The mathematician's way: start by a model of what collaboration is, and expand from there. If your model is simple enough, you may have to use complex algorithms, but there is a hope that the UI will match the initial intuition even for non-technical users. Darcs did this, using the model that work produces diffs, and conflicts are when diffs can't be reordered. Unfortunately this is slow and not too scalable. Pijul does almost the same, but doesn't restrict itself to just functions, using also points in the computation, which makes it much faster (but way harder to implement and a bit less flexible, no free lunch).

3. The Hooli way: take an arbitrary existing VCS, say Git. Get one of your company's user interviewer, and try to please interviewees by tweaking the command names and arguments.

The tradeoff between 1 and 2 is that 1 is much more likely to produce a new usable and scalable system fast, but may result in leaky abstractions, bad merges and hacks everywhere, while 2 may have robust abstractions if the project goes to completion, but that may take years. OTOH, method 3 is the fastest and safest method, but may not produce anything new.

So, I am the main author of Pijul, and I also don't quite see how to do much better (I'm definitely working on improvements, but not technically radical). But the causal relationship isn't the one you may be thinking: it is because I thought this was the ultimate thing we could have that I started the project, not the other way around.