That's still a strange way to work compared to using a DVCS or even checking out with old-fashioned SVN or CVS. I also hope they didn't use the crippled consol

That's still a strange way to work compared to using a DVCS or even checking out with old-fashioned SVN or CVS. I also hope they didn't use the crippled console version of Emacs, but made use of TRAMP.