> 2. What should we say to someone like Arjun? It's clear from his > post that he knows the arguments in favor of version control, and > has actually tried it. It's also clear that he cares about doing things > well - what can we do to convince someone like that? > > It's always too much trouble until just after you needed it most.
I think here we are getting sucked into a emacs vs vim war. This guy knows that version control is useful, in fact he does use it. Copying your files in different directories/dropbox *IS* version control. The linux kernel did it that way *FOR YEARS* and it worked just fine and it can work just fine for you if you are meticulous. The point is that this approach is boring, error prone and brittle. This guy claims that git is hard, boring, error prone and brittle too, so he find his approach "better" since at least is not "hard". I am sympathetic with his claims because I too find the git UI [1] boring, error prone and brittle. But less boring, less error prone and less brittle than copying my files by hand, so I use git. The only solution I can offer him would be the one I mentioned before in this conversation. Cheers, Davide [1]: Note that I wrote the UI. I had the opportunity to study the inner implementation of git, and I find the git internals extremely well done, beautiful and brilliant. I don't know how that fascinating internals became the abysmal UI that is exposed to users _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
