6 ms·

Subclassing for versioning, eh? I remember talking to a friend in the early 90s who was doing that at the company he worked at. I was reading about SCCS at th

Subclassing for versioning, eh? I remember talking to a friend in the early 90s who was doing that at the company he worked at. I was reading about SCCS at the time, and wanted to convince my management to use that, but couldn't get them away from the "directory tree per release version" method. My next job in the mid 90s used RCS, and I've never worked at a job since that didn't use some kind of version control / archive software. Hard to fathom that some organizations still avoid version/revision control. How do you "undo" to yesterday when you change your mind about something???

learnstats2 11y ago
> How do you "undo" to yesterday when you change your mind about something??? One might argue that developer time is valuable enough to ensure that it's spent on things that won't be "undone".
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- faceplanter 11y ago
  That's totally unrealistic. Often it's not the dev. that changes his mind, but the client. And since they have the $$$ you will be "undoing" previous work.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Exactly. Any good development process and software architecture must be responsive to change without enduring huge problems trying.
- mgold 11y ago
  What happens when you introduce a bug that isn't discovered for 6 months? What happens if you think of a better way to do something? What happens if you're working on something and the power goes out, leaving you with partially-completed and saved work with no editor history? And so on...
plorkyeran 11y ago
Modifying behavior only by subclassing rather than changing the code was the original idea of the open/closed principal. Of course, the idea has drifted a bit since then since everyone discovered that in practice it worked terribly.
ams6110 11y ago
I see no indication that the devs aren't using version control. All we know from that statement is that they are not making it available to the public.
- Roboprog 11y ago
  point taken -- or rather, "given" :-)

learnstats2 11y ago

> How do you "undo" to yesterday when you change your mind about something??? One might argue that developer time is valuable enough to ensure that it's spent on things that won't be "undone".

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
faceplanter 11y ago
That's totally unrealistic. Often it's not the dev. that changes his mind, but the client. And since they have the $$$ you will be "undoing" previous work.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Exactly. Any good development process and software architecture must be responsive to change without enduring huge problems trying.
mgold 11y ago
What happens when you introduce a bug that isn't discovered for 6 months? What happens if you think of a better way to do something? What happens if you're working on something and the power goes out, leaving you with partially-completed and saved work with no editor history? And so on...

plorkyeran 11y ago

Modifying behavior only by subclassing rather than changing the code was the original idea of the open/closed principal. Of course, the idea has drifted a bit since then since everyone discovered that in practice it worked terribly.

ams6110 11y ago

I see no indication that the devs aren't using version control. All we know from that statement is that they are not making it available to the public.

Roboprog 11y ago
point taken -- or rather, "given" :-)