I think DVCS can also help here because you have context switches fast using many throwaway topic branches and you can discard a branch that did not work out th

I think DVCS can also help here because you have context switches fast using many throwaway topic branches and you can discard a branch that did not work out the way you like. Only pushing the one that worked up after you cleaned up the history a bit. I would guess that a majority of coders that have to work with svn in a corporate environment do not like to go off on branches that may or may not work out for fear of messing up the blessed repository. (that and branching was not the easiest thing to do in subversion.)