[mkramlich]

I think personal experiences with shell command typo disasters and hard drive failures are probably the most common, and most effective reasons why people start using version control and backups religiously. The Unix command-line in particular is dangerous: incredibly powerful when used right, but one slight mistake and you cut off a finger.

Fortunately, they are only virtual fingers and we can grow them back on demand with adequate preparation, unlike real ones. :)

[enneff]

Version control is also fantastic because you can think a lot less about making drastic edits. Gone are the days when I would keep bits of code commented out "just in case" I needed it back at some point.

[dasil003]

Mostly, although I take issue with the "never leave commented code around, that's what version control is for" as an absolute. If it's something that is not adequately replaced, and is likely to save some time for someone in the future then it's better to keep it commented out rather than removing it since future devs may never know it even existed.