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by mbesto 3889 days ago
I'm sitting in the office of one right now. Their codebase is sitting in Microsoft Visual SourceSafe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_SourceSafe

Yes, that's right folks - it's last release was exactly 10 years ago. You wouldn't believe some of the systems I've seen.

1 comments

Yes, but migrating to another VCS would be like working on a moving car and you have to pay the mechanic to plan -> dev -> implement...and then convince everyone who's worked with the VSS thought pattern (which is pretty different from SVN, GIT, just about everything) to use this new 'better' thought pattern or create something that will mimic the workflow they're are used to and connects to the new VCS...all the while you are still try to generate revenue rather than resolve a legacy 'issue' that really just looks bad and is still in place because: it works, everyone is used to it, you don't have the time / resources to make a change until it doesn't work.

Not that I'm arguing for VSS, it's awful, but there are business reasons I can see trumping the desires of wanting an upgrade.

Edit: spelling

True story: it took two months to explain to an IT department that XML serialization files should be flagged as binary to prevent SVN performing line auto-merges on them.

Then another month to implement the change. And this was only for one sub-group.

I think some of the problem is "People who still feel VCS is a valid technology choice probably shouldn't be trusted to make technical decisions."