3 ms·

I remember downloading/emailing patch files around and groaning when your local changes had made it impossible to get the patch file to work smoothly, so you en

I remember downloading/emailing patch files around and groaning when your local changes had made it impossible to get the patch file to work smoothly, so you ended up going through line by line trying to figure out what was supposed to go where, when...

necovek 3y ago
How is that different from conflict resolution today? Git essentially automated patch file management, but the hard problem of incompatible changes is just as hard today.
- sdrothrock 3y ago
  There was less automation and as far as I recall, none of us had "branches" -- everyone worked on a local trunk and everything would diverge rapidly. I wasn't working professionally at the time (I was 11-13), so I wasn't exactly up-to-date on the latest modern conveniences then either. :) It was also much more difficult to figure out changes across multiple files with a single low-resolution (800 x 600 at the time, I think) monitor on a computer that could barely keep a few files open simultaneously. Another big pain point was spending an hour or more downloading a patch (via dialup) only to realize that you needed other patches or files before you could actually start working on anything, or that you'd downloaded the wrong file, etc. So there were many little inconveniences that added up to make it tremendously painful (in my memories) compared to today's experiences.
  - necovek 3y ago
    With the CRT of yore, 800x600 was extremely rare: you had a bandwidth to work with, so you could balance refresh rate with resolution, and 1280x1024 or something wasn't rare at all on 15"/17" screens. Only with "HD video" and TFT screens did we end up getting stuck on 720p (or 1366x768, yikes) screens for a decade before FullHD started appearing on screens again. Again, that's unrelated to "patch management": I am not disputing we have better experience overall today, but none of that is due to git.
  - necovek 3y ago
    I also think you could have local branches in SVN, but I might be misremembering things.

necovek 3y ago

How is that different from conflict resolution today? Git essentially automated patch file management, but the hard problem of incompatible changes is just as hard today.

sdrothrock 3y ago
There was less automation and as far as I recall, none of us had "branches" -- everyone worked on a local trunk and everything would diverge rapidly. I wasn't working professionally at the time (I was 11-13), so I wasn't exactly up-to-date on the latest modern conveniences then either. :) It was also much more difficult to figure out changes across multiple files with a single low-resolution (800 x 600 at the time, I think) monitor on a computer that could barely keep a few files open simultaneously. Another big pain point was spending an hour or more downloading a patch (via dialup) only to realize that you needed other patches or files before you could actually start working on anything, or that you'd downloaded the wrong file, etc. So there were many little inconveniences that added up to make it tremendously painful (in my memories) compared to today's experiences.
- necovek 3y ago
  With the CRT of yore, 800x600 was extremely rare: you had a bandwidth to work with, so you could balance refresh rate with resolution, and 1280x1024 or something wasn't rare at all on 15"/17" screens. Only with "HD video" and TFT screens did we end up getting stuck on 720p (or 1366x768, yikes) screens for a decade before FullHD started appearing on screens again. Again, that's unrelated to "patch management": I am not disputing we have better experience overall today, but none of that is due to git.
- necovek 3y ago
  I also think you could have local branches in SVN, but I might be misremembering things.