+1 - being able to recover from your mistakes is a great motivation. I usually combine that with the idea that, if your code is part of a scientific pipeline that you are using to publish papers, it is important to be able to revert back to earlier states (that you may have used for earlier papers) even if you don't break your code when you try to improve it.
- Emily On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 5:59 AM Ben Waugh <[email protected]> wrote: > On 02/03/16 07:51, Konrad Hinsen wrote: > > I have had much better success introducing beginners to version control > > very slowly. I start showing them the most basic commands to keep file > > histories on their own machine. No branching, no collaboration. And I > > use Mercurial. This has always led to success in the sense that people > > start to use version control for their work. > > > > A few of those people later switched to Git in order to participate in > > collaborations on GitHub. Most are still quitely using Mercurial on > > their own machines. > > > > I suppose one could teach Git in the same way, but I didn't try. I > > believe the important part is to start with a minimal useful level of > > version control, and let practice do the rest. That's of course not > > possible in a two-day intensive workshop. > > This is pretty much how I try to introduce Git: sell it as a tool for > tracking changes on your own machine, which is fast and doesn't rely on > being connected to a network if you want to go back to an older version. > > The best thing about this is that it lets you be less careful when > programming. You can explore random ideas without worrying about being > unable to get back to a working state when it all falls apart. Most > students who have taken any programming course without version control > have spent large amounts of time trying to undo a mistake when they > can't even recall the last change they made. > > I hope that students will remember this after the workshop, rather than > being put off by the complexities of the later lessons on collaboration. > > Cheers, > Ben > > -- > Dr Ben Waugh Tel. +44 (0)20 7679 7223 > Computing and IT Manager Internal: 37223 > Dept of Physics and Astronomy > University College London > London WC1E 6BT > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >
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