Mercurial, 20 years and counting: how are we still alive and kicking? [video] | Hacker News

Hacker News marked Mercurial’s 20th anniversary with memories of why many developers once preferred it over Git.

Commenters praised Mercurial’s simpler interface, cleaner branching model, and tools like TortoiseHg.

The discussion contrasted Mercurial’s usability with Git’s eventual victory through momentum, ecosystem support, and workflow tooling.

The thread also offered a broader lesson: technical elegance alone may not beat stronger adoption and platform effects.