4 ms·

"I know plenty of people who prefer more advanced source control system [than Subversion], but my belief is that many agile practices diminish the importance of

"I know plenty of people who prefer more advanced source control system [than Subversion], but my belief is that many agile practices diminish the importance of advanced features like branching." The author instantly lost any credibility with me after this line.

hello_moto 15y ago
Why? I thought some companies do not do branching? They have their own processes? Some went nuts with the whole turn "on/off" features (so no branching). I thought some team within Google also don't do branching? Always HEAD?
- wahnfrieden 15y ago
  We use git at my workplace without branching, and we practice continuous deployment. The advantage is that you spend less time merging, and you ship things in shorter intervals and smaller increments, an important part of CD. Some of us do use local branching, but we don't push to remote branches.
- thurn 15y ago
  Facebook doesn't branch, all of their code is written against trunk.
  - jonstjohn 15y ago
    is this true? I'd like to hear more about this? How can all code be committed to trunk? Don't they need to branch for releasing at least?
    - thurn 15y ago
      Oh, yeah, they branch for releasing. That is true.
- 6ren 15y ago
  John Carmack recently said he implements alternatives "in parallel" so he can compare them, instead of by branching http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3266741 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3266741 [my definition: branching is non-code ad hoc compile-time polymorphism at an arbitrary set of points]
funksta 15y ago
That line stood out to me too, since I have found the opposite to be true. Sounds like it's coming from someone who's never seen the benefits of switching to a DVCS.
brlewis 15y ago
He was quoting verbatim Joel's original list from the year 2000. I don't think the author (in 2008) needed to expound on what appeared/changed/matured in the interim.
- nimblegorilla 15y ago
  The original list didn't mention anything about branching: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html. I agree that agile development eliminates some of the needs for branching, but I think there are still many useful ways to add it into your workflow.
  - brlewis 15y ago
    You are quite right about the original list -- I unfortunately cannot edit my comment at this point. Now the article has lost some credibility with me. I agree with you about branching. Although technically what the article says about branching is true, I don't think someone who sees branching the way you and I do would write it that way. (The article didn't lose all credibility since it's from 2008, when although DVCS were reasonably mature, they weren't pervasive.)
hkolek 15y ago
Agreed. With git (and I suspect this is probably inherent to dvcs) branching is very basic functionality, not an advanced feature.
deleted 15y ago
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daemin 15y ago
Just how would (non local) branching be useful to someone writing a web application or doing client projects? I can understand branching being useful for a local copy so that one may implement a variety of features and then picking and choosing which to integrate. But barring special circumstances, there is only one version of a website out there running in the world, hence branching isn't at all that useful.

hello_moto 15y ago

Why? I thought some companies do not do branching? They have their own processes? Some went nuts with the whole turn "on/off" features (so no branching). I thought some team within Google also don't do branching? Always HEAD?

wahnfrieden 15y ago
We use git at my workplace without branching, and we practice continuous deployment. The advantage is that you spend less time merging, and you ship things in shorter intervals and smaller increments, an important part of CD. Some of us do use local branching, but we don't push to remote branches.
thurn 15y ago
Facebook doesn't branch, all of their code is written against trunk.
- jonstjohn 15y ago
  is this true? I'd like to hear more about this? How can all code be committed to trunk? Don't they need to branch for releasing at least?
  - thurn 15y ago
    Oh, yeah, they branch for releasing. That is true.
6ren 15y ago
John Carmack recently said he implements alternatives "in parallel" so he can compare them, instead of by branching http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3266741 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3266741 [my definition: branching is non-code ad hoc compile-time polymorphism at an arbitrary set of points]

funksta 15y ago

That line stood out to me too, since I have found the opposite to be true. Sounds like it's coming from someone who's never seen the benefits of switching to a DVCS.

brlewis 15y ago

He was quoting verbatim Joel's original list from the year 2000. I don't think the author (in 2008) needed to expound on what appeared/changed/matured in the interim.

nimblegorilla 15y ago
The original list didn't mention anything about branching: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html. I agree that agile development eliminates some of the needs for branching, but I think there are still many useful ways to add it into your workflow.
- brlewis 15y ago
  You are quite right about the original list -- I unfortunately cannot edit my comment at this point. Now the article has lost some credibility with me. I agree with you about branching. Although technically what the article says about branching is true, I don't think someone who sees branching the way you and I do would write it that way. (The article didn't lose all credibility since it's from 2008, when although DVCS were reasonably mature, they weren't pervasive.)

hkolek 15y ago

Agreed. With git (and I suspect this is probably inherent to dvcs) branching is very basic functionality, not an advanced feature.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

daemin 15y ago

Just how would (non local) branching be useful to someone writing a web application or doing client projects? I can understand branching being useful for a local copy so that one may implement a variety of features and then picking and choosing which to integrate. But barring special circumstances, there is only one version of a website out there running in the world, hence branching isn't at all that useful.