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by jpitz 5589 days ago
My gut reaction is "as early as possible."

I'd be curious to hear arguments to the contrary.

1 comments

That'd be my gut reaction too, but that might just be because we understand the importance of it. Attrition rates are really high in intro CS classes. When loops still seem like a difficult concept, is version control just one more thing too much? On the other hand, if you spend time before starting programming just learning version control with plain English text, are you encouraging students to drop because they're not getting to program like they expected? And when most projects are 10 to 15 lines long and done alone, is there an effective way to still show how version control is superior to the undo button?
I always make an analogy to video game quicksaves, personally. They usually go 'oh!' and you can see it click in their eyes.

Then again, that only works for a select audience.