Something happened this week, something really good
One of the things that was really annoying me at work was that some of the people there was still 1995 and coding in a team without using any kind of version control.
Well not anymore. We had a couple of big projects coming in, and finally I convinced all the people there that we really needed to get everyone to use Git or Mercurial. So I explained the concepts then we created a small dummy repository and started playing around with it. After a little while everyone was discovering the power of being in 2012. Ok there’s still a lot to do, they still have some bad habits from using errr nothing, like working for a day without committing anything to the repository. But I think that will end with time.
What can I ask next? Well the only thing I’d like to happen next would be for us to start using real hosting companies and not 1975 companies or whatever company our client had a contract with. If that happens in the near future I’ll be one hell of a happy nerd.
Oh well, one can’t ask for everything at once can we? :)
If you having the same problem I had you might want to reason with your team and try to get them to the dark side.
Also show them this tutorial so they can see that is not so hard to do.
And finally it you have any problems convincing your team I think in that article just this part should be enough for that. If not, I think you have a bigger problem in your hands.
Why Use Version Control?
You might be wondering why you should use version control, even for a site you’ll never collaborate with anyone on. This is a valid question. I can best illustrate the answer with a scenario you may have encountered in the past. Let’s say you’re in the middle of making a site and want to try something crazy with the css. Maybe you want to do a bit of an experiment and make everything strange shades of yellow and red. You don’t know if you’re going to keep the work when you finish it. Since it’s an experiment, it would probably be a good idea to not mess up your working version of the site.
At this point, you might be thinking of creating a copy of the site and making your changes on the copy. Maybe you’re sure that you’re going to use this work and you’re going to crank through. Maybe it doesn’t work out, though. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could take a snapshot of your site now, do your experiment, and not have to worry about whether you mess things up? That’s exactly what version control is for!