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I would never think of asking this question since I have always just assumed that if you are building software, you are using version control. Apparently I was

by 10098 13y ago

I would never think of asking this question since I have always just assumed that if you are building software, you are using version control. Apparently I was wrong...

lotyrin 13y ago
... Yeah. I spent one job emailing code files back and forth (and verbally acquiring locks at the file-level). I spent most of the time there trying to convince the team to at least learn how to use a patch tool and mail patches instead. At another job they just had a shared drive with a single copy of each project and mandated we use a particular editor because it had an in-built locking scheme. There were a few conditions (e.g. crashes) that required manual lock manipulation before you could accomplish anything. People would often manually release locks out of habit, open a file for writing but just leave it open all day in the background while the lock-holder worked, save the old copy when they were closing up at the end of the day, thereby reverting a day's progress. There was no backup strategy in place. This wasn't the 90s or anything, git and GitHub were already established.
dyadic 13y ago
I once thought the same, and then I landed at a company where the source was contained across a mixture of svn, network drives and customer production servers. However, I don't directly ask about VCS now, it seems overly focused for a question, instead I will ask how they produce builds, what the deploy pipeline is, and then track back if I find their answers alarming.
- nilliams 13y ago
  > ... instead I will ask how they produce builds, what the deploy pipeline is, and then track back if I find their answers alarming. That's a good approach, noted!
rmc 13y ago
Oh those companies exist.... Much less now... but still...
sergiotapia 13y ago
Yep - I worked at a company where our entire codebase was inside a folder in our web server. We actually copied things locally and had to paste in changes via FTP. I tried to make the team switch to something like Git or hell - even SVN - something to manage the code and not have it all in one point of failure but that fell on deaf ears. Ultimately I create a private repository on Bitbucket and pushed the code there using Git and used that as my personal backup in case shit hit the fan.

by 10098 13y ago

I would never think of asking this question since I have always just assumed that if you are building software, you are using version control. Apparently I was wrong...

lotyrin 13y ago

... Yeah. I spent one job emailing code files back and forth (and verbally acquiring locks at the file-level). I spent most of the time there trying to convince the team to at least learn how to use a patch tool and mail patches instead. At another job they just had a shared drive with a single copy of each project and mandated we use a particular editor because it had an in-built locking scheme. There were a few conditions (e.g. crashes) that required manual lock manipulation before you could accomplish anything. People would often manually release locks out of habit, open a file for writing but just leave it open all day in the background while the lock-holder worked, save the old copy when they were closing up at the end of the day, thereby reverting a day's progress. There was no backup strategy in place. This wasn't the 90s or anything, git and GitHub were already established.

dyadic 13y ago

I once thought the same, and then I landed at a company where the source was contained across a mixture of svn, network drives and customer production servers. However, I don't directly ask about VCS now, it seems overly focused for a question, instead I will ask how they produce builds, what the deploy pipeline is, and then track back if I find their answers alarming.

nilliams 13y ago
> ... instead I will ask how they produce builds, what the deploy pipeline is, and then track back if I find their answers alarming. That's a good approach, noted!

rmc 13y ago

Oh those companies exist.... Much less now... but still...

sergiotapia 13y ago

Yep - I worked at a company where our entire codebase was inside a folder in our web server. We actually copied things locally and had to paste in changes via FTP. I tried to make the team switch to something like Git or hell - even SVN - something to manage the code and not have it all in one point of failure but that fell on deaf ears. Ultimately I create a private repository on Bitbucket and pushed the code there using Git and used that as my personal backup in case shit hit the fan.