Mission Statement

[Justin Love]

I haven't been completely satisfied that I'm communicating the basic
idea. So I'm thinking of taking a page from Steve Jobs (without the
hokey magical bit) and getting a single concise value proposition,
repeated several times. Ideas so far:

Amp is... (or will be)

Every repo. Customizable commands.

A familiar, customizable interface to every version control repository.

Every version control repository; an interface you can make your own.

Ruby API to every version control repo and a versatile command line interface.

These are more taglines and might not be quite informative enough:

Version control playground.

Hack your VCS.

--
Justin Love -- http://JustinLove.name/
http://ComputerGeneratedDreams.com/
"[T]he woods would be silent if no bird sang except the best."
 - Henry Van Dyke

[Ari Brown]

On Nov 5, 2010, at 2:05 PM, Justin Love wrote:

> I haven't been completely satisfied that I'm communicating the basic
> idea. So I'm thinking of taking a page from Steve Jobs (without the
> hokey magical bit) and getting a single concise value proposition,
> repeated several times.

I've been thinking a lot about this too.

Amp is Mercurial.
Wait, not, that's not quite right.
Amp is Git.
Nope, that's not it either.
Amp is both.
Ok, now we're getting somewhere, but that's still not it.
Amp is your old VCS – whatever it was.
Amp is your old VCS with more buttons.
Amp lowers the bar to hack your VCS.

'Hack your VCS' sounds right. But I just know someone's gonna get all butthurt from it saying "well you can do that in my old VCS too!" I wanna just say that Amp lowers the bar, but that sounds like it's the opposite of fucking AT&T or whatever that company is.

I like 'Hack your VCS'.

[Justin Love]

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 13:59, Ari Brown <a...@aribrown.com> wrote:
> 'Hack your VCS' sounds right. But I just know someone's gonna get all butthurt from it saying "well you can do that in my old VCS too!"

Maybe we need quantification

∀your: ∀VCS: Hack your VCS

If that doesn't survive encoding:

(for-all)your: (for-all)VCS: Hack your VCS

In theory 'your' should cover everything since each person can have their own, but it may not be obvious at first.  Unfortunately I fear quantification will be a bit obtuse on the whole.

I kind of like Hack your VCS as well, but it's a tagline - it's not answer to the question "What is Amp?"

[Justin Love]

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 14:44, Justin Love <goo...@justinlove.name> wrote:

I kind of like Hack your VCS as well, but it's a tagline - it's not answer to the question "What is Amp?"

I exchanged "Version Control | Revolution" for "Hack Your VCS | In Ruby" on the title page.

My current answer for Amp Is... "A familiar, customizable interface to every version control repository."

[Ari Brown]

On Nov 8, 2010, at 3:36 PM, Justin Love wrote:
> My current answer for Amp Is... "A familiar, customizable interface to every version control repository."

I like this. It's simple, not trying to be super catchy, and correct. Not everything needs a jingle.

[Michael Edgar]

I thought this was awesome, personally, but I agree it may be too opaque for its place

in the presentation.

I'll be thinking about this tonight (all-nighter for compilers course...)