As I’m in the midst of teaching git, this has been a really important conversation for me since many of my learners are wondering about how to put word/excel/etc under version control and why something like dropbox wouldn’t work. While they think git is interesting, they also appear somewhat skeptical that it is worth learning.
I agree with the idea that dropbox is likely a good first step. In light of this conversation and the overall push for something like dropbox from some quarters, one of the strengths that I feel formal version control wins with vs. dropbox is that I can rm -rf my_project and do a pull from github and get my project back. Not sure how easy that is to pull off in dropbox, but that it’s baked into git/github for me is a selling point. Another thing that I’ve found frustrating with dropbox when collaborators want a file is that there doesn’t seem to be an *easy* way to put a file up there from our cluster. So i have to ftp it to my laptop and the put it up on to dropbox. Collaborating with myself, it’s not so easy to access and manipulate code from dropbox when I’m on our cluster. I’m sure there’s a hack out there to make this work, but that it’s baked into GitHub is a strength for me over dropbox. Also, having multiple files for the same code is one of those practices we’re trying to avoid. Perhaps in thinking about how to motivate the use of things like version control, we could think about good/better/best and say dropbox is good (or perhaps better), but formal version control (pick your tool) would be better and here is why. Pat > On Mar 1, 2016, at 8:34 AM, David Martin (Staff) <[email protected]> > wrote: > > 1. What's LD50 [1] for version control, i.e., how long would people have to > use it (or watch someone else use) for half of them to be convinced it's > worth adopting? I think LD50 for the Unix shell is less than an hour, > because that's how long it takes us to introduce pipes and loops, which most > workshop participants find compelling. At what point do at least half of > workshop participants find Git compelling enough to actually adopt it? > > In my case, about 30 seconds after I tell them that they will be assessed on > the code in their last git commit prior to the submission deadline (or a > tagged commit detailed in their report) :) Actually the compelling argument > is the lose/restore, or the commit/retrieve elsewhere/sync with colleagues. > > 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. > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > > The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096 > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
