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Git is not a skill, it is a habit. Anyone in computer science should have developed this habit. This is for many reasons. Version control is not only about con

Git is not a skill, it is a habit. Anyone in computer science should have developed this habit. This is for many reasons. Version control is not only about controlling versions. - It's not about saving files, it's about understanding group work flows. Every text project should be in a git repo. If it's code or not it doesn't matter. You can see what things were written for, who wrote them, and even more. - It's a method to catch cheating. If someone submits one commit called "Working" or something and has no history of the code/project it's likely they are cheating. - It's decentralized backups and and offline workflow (for git) - It's a method to collect and aggregate work. Setup a gitlabs/gitbucket for the class and make every student keep their projects up there. The teacher has a centralized and nice looking place to find the code and it doesn't make the students zip up or require them to do anything. Their work is shared by nature. - It exposes you to what you are going to be using every day for the rest of your life as a CS major.

ng12 10y ago
It's not a question of how useful VCS is. It's a question about what the role of universities is. In the US/Canada college degrees are generally not directly training you for a career -- that's what internships are for. My position is that this is the right approach. I will have a lifetime to perfect my git skills, but I only had four years to learn about programming language semantics from a recognized expert in the field.
- wolf550e 10y ago
  Hopefully your CS degree made you write code and submit code for evaluation. Asking you to write code and not teaching you how to use version control is wasting your time fixing problems with your code that are easily solved when you have version control. Being taught how to use version control leaves you more time to learn about programming language semantics. Also, a university that gives CS degrees to people who cannot actually work as programmers is doing a disservice to their graduates, even if the university intends for everyone to continue with post graduate studies and go into academia. At the very least, your doctoral advisor will need you to write some code for them, and you better be able to do it.
- vacri 10y ago
  Maybe not perfecting the crazy deeper parts of git, but the basic idea of VCS is pretty fundamental.

ng12 10y ago

It's not a question of how useful VCS is. It's a question about what the role of universities is. In the US/Canada college degrees are generally not directly training you for a career -- that's what internships are for. My position is that this is the right approach. I will have a lifetime to perfect my git skills, but I only had four years to learn about programming language semantics from a recognized expert in the field.

wolf550e 10y ago
Hopefully your CS degree made you write code and submit code for evaluation. Asking you to write code and not teaching you how to use version control is wasting your time fixing problems with your code that are easily solved when you have version control. Being taught how to use version control leaves you more time to learn about programming language semantics. Also, a university that gives CS degrees to people who cannot actually work as programmers is doing a disservice to their graduates, even if the university intends for everyone to continue with post graduate studies and go into academia. At the very least, your doctoral advisor will need you to write some code for them, and you better be able to do it.
vacri 10y ago
Maybe not perfecting the crazy deeper parts of git, but the basic idea of VCS is pretty fundamental.