[clepto]

I work at a VOIP services provider and we operate multiple brands which are companies we’ve acquired over several years. One thing that has rang true of every company we’ve acquired is that there is typically barely even a way to run one piece locally, let alone the whole thing.

Some of these when I took over there wasn’t even version control, and they were being developed by FTPing files to production server or even editing them live with vim or something. Certainly no reproducible containerization or even VMs to speak of.

I agree completely with you about having a solid development environment. I’ve spent the better part of a year creating such a thing for some of the brands, and it has increased our time to ship features and fixes probably ten fold.

[temp8964]

> they were being developed by FTPing files to production server or even editing them live with vim or something.

Many editors / IDEs (e.g. Notepad++) can directly connect to the FTP server, so working on a FTP servers looks almost same as working on a local folder. You just make changes to the files, and then refresh the web browser to see the changes.

[bonestormii_]

lol, yes, sure. But why don't you sound horrified?

Version control at least is essential for something of any size with any number of people working on it. You must be able to "revert" a set of changes quickly and reliably if the application has any importance at all.

[WJW]

> You must

Don't want to be rude here, but version control is clearly not "required" in the strict sense. Plenty of software has been developed without it. Now I wouldn't want to work at a place without version control either, but it is as required for developing software as seat belts are required for driving a car. Less even, since at least for seat belts they are required by law.

[vbezhenar]

People manually control versions all the time. Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V on a project folder to make a version. I have doubts that someone developed any nontrivial software without that approach.