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That's debatable. Version control have helped me a lot. It also helps me experiment with new code without risking forgetting something because I can always roll

That's debatable. Version control have helped me a lot. It also helps me experiment with new code without risking forgetting something because I can always roll back.

dalke 11y ago
I agree that the topic is debatable. A few years ago I looked for any studies on the usefulness of a version control system over, say, a versioning filesystem. (Examples of such include the VAX filesystem which auto-versioned every save, Dropbox does the same for at least 30 days, and the Mac Time Machine gives access to previous backup snapshots.) I wondered if for some projects auto-versioning on save or clock event in a VFS would be more useful than manual versioning with a VCS. For an common scenario, co-authors working on a paper might have a shared Dropbox directory. They can modify the images, Word document, etc. safely without risking forgetting something because there's the option to see older versions of the directory. Those studies have not been done. I know for myself, for the initial stages of a project, I find it more effective to iterate through multiple directories (eg, "foo", "foo2", "foo3") so I can easily compare different approaches, than to create a new repo, name the branches, and check out each one to get the same effect. I also have hourly backups, so I won't loose much in the way of code.
- jon-wood 11y ago
  At least for me version control maps better to how I think about my code than individually versioned files at the OS level. It's very rare that a change will hit only one file, at the least it's likely to imply changes in the test suite as well, and likely there'll be several objects collaborating. Being able to group those changes together and then annotate them with a commit message is hugely useful to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly I can roll that change set back as a single unit, but more usefully I can look at the history of a given file, of even a given line of code, and then map the changes to the wider context that influenced them. I couldn't tell you how many times I've wondered just why a line is doing something, run git blame, and instantly been given an answer by a past version of me who still has all the details fresh in their head.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Oh, certainly. My comments is to highlight that there's no research that helps identify if these personal beliefs are generally true. Perhaps it's only useful for large (>1M LOC) projects, or 40% of programmers. Perhaps it's worse for spike projects with 1-3 people, <1KLOC, and <1 week of development, as compared to auto-backups of a project directory every 10 minutes and/or vim's "go back in time" history tracking. We don't really know, beyond personal experience, which is why this is very debatable.
    - dilap 11y ago
      I programmed for a long time (middle school to the end of college) on 1 person or 2 person projects without version control. I'd just manually copy the directory when I'd made significant progress, or wanted to experiment with a different approach. Multi-person collaboration happened by working out who would work on what ahead of time and manually merging the bits back together. It worked great, and even though I now use git for even personal projects, I'm not sure it's on balance useful, along the lines of your thinking. Because: VC warps your thinking. You change your work habits and spend time crafting this artifact, the VC commit history, which is secondary to your actual goal. For example, there's a tendency to quickly jump between different areas, or make unrelated changes, because that works against the nice 'commit-per-thing' history that looks nice in VC. So no VC doesn't seem so crazy to me :)
  - db48x 11y ago
    I never said it's not useful, only that in this circumstance it's not important. It may be that he would eventually gain some efficiency by learning and using version control, but the lack of version control has clearly not prevented him from successfully creating a program, and quite a complicated one at that. Even huge projects involving large numbers of people can be and have been done without version control, if you have a large enough project management staff. You'd be mad to try to do it that way merely because you can, now that version control has gotten so good, but it's still not a necessity. It's not vital.
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
If you're the sole developer, copying code to some scrapbook or something works just as well. Probably even better, because you can create a simpler or more comprehensible archival system. And search.
- wingerlang 11y ago
  I don't follow how it would work better. Right now I don't need to do any kind of setup or thinking. I could rewrite a huge chunk right now as an experiment and change 1000s of lines of code. Then if I don't like it I can just press "reset" and I'm back to stable. In fact, I did just that yesterday.

That's debatable. Version control have helped me a lot. It also helps me experiment with new code without risking forgetting something because I can always roll back.

dalke 11y ago

I agree that the topic is debatable. A few years ago I looked for any studies on the usefulness of a version control system over, say, a versioning filesystem. (Examples of such include the VAX filesystem which auto-versioned every save, Dropbox does the same for at least 30 days, and the Mac Time Machine gives access to previous backup snapshots.) I wondered if for some projects auto-versioning on save or clock event in a VFS would be more useful than manual versioning with a VCS. For an common scenario, co-authors working on a paper might have a shared Dropbox directory. They can modify the images, Word document, etc. safely without risking forgetting something because there's the option to see older versions of the directory. Those studies have not been done. I know for myself, for the initial stages of a project, I find it more effective to iterate through multiple directories (eg, "foo", "foo2", "foo3") so I can easily compare different approaches, than to create a new repo, name the branches, and check out each one to get the same effect. I also have hourly backups, so I won't loose much in the way of code.

jon-wood 11y ago
At least for me version control maps better to how I think about my code than individually versioned files at the OS level. It's very rare that a change will hit only one file, at the least it's likely to imply changes in the test suite as well, and likely there'll be several objects collaborating. Being able to group those changes together and then annotate them with a commit message is hugely useful to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly I can roll that change set back as a single unit, but more usefully I can look at the history of a given file, of even a given line of code, and then map the changes to the wider context that influenced them. I couldn't tell you how many times I've wondered just why a line is doing something, run git blame, and instantly been given an answer by a past version of me who still has all the details fresh in their head.
- dalke 11y ago
  Oh, certainly. My comments is to highlight that there's no research that helps identify if these personal beliefs are generally true. Perhaps it's only useful for large (>1M LOC) projects, or 40% of programmers. Perhaps it's worse for spike projects with 1-3 people, <1KLOC, and <1 week of development, as compared to auto-backups of a project directory every 10 minutes and/or vim's "go back in time" history tracking. We don't really know, beyond personal experience, which is why this is very debatable.
  - dilap 11y ago
    I programmed for a long time (middle school to the end of college) on 1 person or 2 person projects without version control. I'd just manually copy the directory when I'd made significant progress, or wanted to experiment with a different approach. Multi-person collaboration happened by working out who would work on what ahead of time and manually merging the bits back together. It worked great, and even though I now use git for even personal projects, I'm not sure it's on balance useful, along the lines of your thinking. Because: VC warps your thinking. You change your work habits and spend time crafting this artifact, the VC commit history, which is secondary to your actual goal. For example, there's a tendency to quickly jump between different areas, or make unrelated changes, because that works against the nice 'commit-per-thing' history that looks nice in VC. So no VC doesn't seem so crazy to me :)
- db48x 11y ago
  I never said it's not useful, only that in this circumstance it's not important. It may be that he would eventually gain some efficiency by learning and using version control, but the lack of version control has clearly not prevented him from successfully creating a program, and quite a complicated one at that. Even huge projects involving large numbers of people can be and have been done without version control, if you have a large enough project management staff. You'd be mad to try to do it that way merely because you can, now that version control has gotten so good, but it's still not a necessity. It's not vital.

Cthulhu_ 11y ago

If you're the sole developer, copying code to some scrapbook or something works just as well. Probably even better, because you can create a simpler or more comprehensible archival system. And search.

wingerlang 11y ago
I don't follow how it would work better. Right now I don't need to do any kind of setup or thinking. I could rewrite a huge chunk right now as an experiment and change 1000s of lines of code. Then if I don't like it I can just press "reset" and I'm back to stable. In fact, I did just that yesterday.