[majormajor]

At least in IntelliJ, I find using the local file history stuff painful. With explicit source control, I'm making specific decisions to check in known states. When I have to resort to the local file history stuff, there's a lot more of "oh, here I undo'd a typo" and so on type of things.

That said, it can be a lifesaver when I didn't make an explicit commit, then started doing stuff, then realized "ok this got out of hand AND I wish I could go back five minutes but it's gonna be annoying."

[hinkley]

The intellij local history works best when your code is a raging monolith. It punishes you when you find coupling in otherwise uncoupled code, and that punishment is there whether you leave the coupling or try to fix it.

One of the failure modes for people leaving a mess is if it's too hard to fix it they give up. So that's no good.