I pulled this out explicitly because the student viewpoint on this is
*correct*. I need to explain why and how we change that.
Stewart Stremler wrote:
have never heard of source control. In a university environment, likely
already strewn with disperate systems, adding one more to the mix might
turn folks off. I would think that 'Save your work to your Z: drive' is a
I had students that mumbled and groaned and called me names; one group
came to me and said that they figured I was a complete prat, and then
the night before the assignment was due, they typed "rm * .class", and
weeks of work just vanished.
And then they did "cvs update" and only lost an hour of work. Instant
converts!
These are the lessons that students *need* to learn.
The students groan about this because they have a different viewpoint
than the instructor.
Initially, the students regard source control as a "code dropbox" for
turning in assignments. Nothing more. *This* is what they are
complaining about.
From their point of view, they have to learn "Yet another stupid
dropbox system that doesn't work." You would be *appalled* at how many
instructors use horrible dropbox systems that don't work.
I only learned this *after* teaching my class last year when one student
said, "CVS was the best dropbox system we ever used. It actually
works." He got practically universal agreement from the rest of the
class. Never in a million years would I have thought of source control
as a dropbox system, but it is. And it is a good one.
They way around this is a little bit of marketing:
1) Try to get multiple instructors to use the same system
This is useful to the students as they only have to learn it once. If
they hear that they will see this system again next year in a different
class, they have a completely different motivation. Eventually the
students should become better than the instructors at using the system.
2) Explain that this system works and is tested by lots of people every
day doing real work.
Students like knowing that something they use will be useful later. I
teach concepts, but there is nothing wrong with using real-world tools
to demonstrate them. Students like this.
3) Explain that the system has more features than a mere "dropbox"
Some students won't care, but others will pay attention. The concept of
pain-free backup is generally one of the most immediate. Being able to
get help from the instructor remotely is another.
That's it. I just wanted to explain the student viewpoint on source
control because it is a bit alien to those of us who reflexively use
source control every day.
Feel free to forward this to anybody you so desire,
-a
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